"Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mr. Juxon. In the silence which followed, the sound of wheels was heard outside. Doctor Longstreet had arrived.
CHAPTER XXIII.
While Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose were together in the library downstairs, while John Short was waking from the short sleep he had enjoyed, and while the squire was listening in the study to Mr. Booley's graphic account of the convict's escape, Mrs. Goddard was alone with her husband, watching every movement and listening intently to every moaning breath he drew.
In the desperate anxiety for his fate, she forgot herself and seemed no longer to feel fatigue or exhaustion from all she herself had suffered. She stood long by his bedside, hoping that he might recognise her and yet fearing the moment when he should recover his senses. Then she noticed that the morning sun was pouring in through the window and she drew a curtain across, to shade his eyes from the glare. Whether the sudden changing of the light affected Goddard, as it does sometimes affect persons in the delirium of a brain fever, or whether it was only a natural turn in his condition, she never knew. His expression changed and acquired that same look of strange intelligence which John Short had noticed in the night; the flush sank from his forehead and gave place to a luminous, transparent colour, his eyelids once more moved naturally, and he looked at his wife as she stood beside him, and recognised her. He was weaker now than when he had spoken with John Short six hours earlier, but he was more fully in possession of his faculties for a brief moment. Mary Goddard trembled and felt her hands turn cold with excitement.
"Walter, do you know me now?" she asked very softly.
"Yes," he said faintly, and closed his eyes. She laid her hand upon his forehead; the coldness of it seemed pleasant to him, for a slight smile flickered over his face.
"You are better, I think," she said again, gazing intently at him.
"Mary—it is Mary?" he murmured, slowly opening his eyes and looking up to her. "Yes—I know you—I have been dreaming a long time. I'm so tired—"
"You must not talk," said she. "It will tire you more." Then she gave him some drink. "Try and sleep," she said in a soothing tone.
"I cannot—oh, Mary, I am very ill."