The man smiled.
"Just the sort of thing which would agitate him, my lord," he said, "if you'll excuse my saying so.—And now, Mr. Templeton, if you'll be so kind as to get a shutter or something, we'll move him up to bed, keeping him flat. I'll sit up with him to-night."
"You're a good fellow, an awfully good fellow!" cried Harry. "And there is no further anxiety. Shall I not send for the doctor?"
"Quite unnecessary, my lord. See how quiet his breathing has become. As like as not he will sleep like a child. He's had these attacks before, and I know well when the danger is over—cardiac. You can go to sleep yourself, my lord, as if nothing had happened."
[CHAPTER X]
MR. FRANCIS IS BETTER
The cheerful optimism of Sanders was borne out by events, if not in letter at any rate in spirit, and Harry, on waking, received the most encouraging reports from the sick-room. Mr. Francis had slept well for the greater part of the night, and though he would take his breakfast in bed, he expected to be down by the middle of the morning. He particularly desired that Harry should be told, as soon as he woke, how completely he had recovered from his attack, and sent him his dear love.
Here, at any rate, was great good news. Again and again during the night Harry had woke from anxious, feverish dreams of that ghastly, masklike face and sonorous breathing; all the earlier hours seemed a constant succession of agonized awakenings. Now it would be the white, mottled face which grew ever larger and nearer to his own, that tore him almost with a shriek from his uneasy slumber, after long, paralyzed attempts to move; now it would be the breathing that got louder and yet more guttural till the air reverberated with it. Again and again he had sat up in bed with flying pulse and damp forehead, and lit a match to see how much more of the night there was still to run; or looking for any sound of movement from his uncle's room at the end of the passage, he would think he heard steps along the corridor, and a stealthy opening or shutting of midnight doors. Once it was a spray of jasmine tapping at his window which woke him with a start, and thinking that some evil news was knocking at his door, it was with an effort that he controlled his throat sufficiently to bid the knocker enter. But about the time of the first hint of the mid-summer dawn, when birds were beginning to tune their notes for the day, and the bushes and eaves grew merry with chirrupings, he fell into a more peaceful sleep, and woke only on the rattle of his blinds being rolled up.