At four the physician came again.
“Not awake?” he said; and he touched his patient’s pulse lightly, and then softly raised one of Lady Gowan’s eyelids, and examined the pupil.
“Nature is helping us, Mr Gowan,” he said softly. “But she ought to have awoke by now, sir?”
“I expected that she would have done so; but nothing could be better. She is extremely weak, and if she could sleep like this till to-morrow her brain would be rested from the terrible anxiety from which she is suffering. I will look in once more this evening.”
Frank was alone again with his charge, and another hour passed, during which the lad dwelt upon the plans that had been made, and calculated that Captain Murray must be about starting on his mission to meet the escort bringing in the prisoners. And as this idea came to him, Frank sat with his head resting upon his hands, his elbows upon his knees, trying hard to master the bitter sense of disappointment that afflicted him.
“And he will be looking from the carriage window to right and left, trying to make out whether I am there!” he groaned. “Oh, it seems cruel—cruel! and he will not know why I have not come.”
But one gleam of hope came here. Captain Murray might find an opportunity to speak with the prisoner, and he would tell him that his son was watching by his suffering mother.
“He will know why I have not come then,” Frank said softly; and after an impatient glance at the clock, he began again to think of Drew and his plans for the rescue.
But now, in the face of the precautions which would be taken, this seemed to be a wildly chimerical scheme, one which was not likely to succeed, and he shook his head sadly as a feeling of despair began to close him in like a dark cloud.
He was at his worst, feeling more and more hopeless, as he sat there, with his face buried in his fingers, when a hand was lightly placed upon his head, and starting up it was to find that his mother was awake, and gazing wistfully at him.