"Remain in this room as quietly as possible," urged the doctor, in a whisper, "and I will let you know at the earliest possible moment whether it will be life or death with your husband, Mrs. Gardiner."
At last the door quickly opened, and two of the doctors stood on the threshold.
"Well, doctor," she cried, looking from one to the other, "what tidings do you bring me? Am I a wife or a widow?"
"Five minutes" time will decide that question, madame," said one, impressively. "We have performed the operation. It rests with a Higher Power whether it will be life or death."
And the doctor who had spoken took out his watch, and stood motionless as a statue while it ticked off the fatal minutes.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
Sally Pendleton and her mother watched their faces keenly.
The time is up. They open the inner door reluctantly. The two doctors, bending over their patient, look up with a smile.
"The heart still beats," they whisper. "He will live."
And this is the intelligence that is carried out to the young bride, the words breaking in upon her in the midst of her selfish calculations.
She did not love Jay Gardiner. Any genuine pa.s.sion in her breast had been coolly nipped in the bud by his indifference, which had stung her to the quick.
She could not make him jealous. She knew that he would have been only too relieved if she had fallen in love with some one else, and had been taken off his hands.
He always treated her in a cool, lordly manner--a manner that always impressed her with his superiority. She was obliged to acknowledge him her master; she could never make him her slave.
And now he was to live, and she was his wife. She would share his magnificent home, all the grandeur that his position would bring to her.
She had been brought up to regard money as the one aim of existence.
Money she must have. She coveted power, and she was girl of the world enough to know that money meant power.
"Yes, he will live; but whether he will gain his full reasoning powers is a matter the future alone can decide," the doctors declare.
Two long months, and Doctor Gardiner is slowly convalescing. His young wife flits about the room, a veritable dream in her dainty lace-trimmed house-gowns, baby pink ribbons tying back her yellow curls. But he looks away from her toward the window with a weary sigh.
He has married her, and he tells himself over and over again, that he must make the best of it. But "making the best of it" is indeed a bitter pill, for she is not his style of woman.
During the time he has been convalescing, he has been studying her, and as one trait after another unfolds itself, he wonders how it will all end.
He sees she has a pa.s.sionate craving for the admiration of men. She makes careful toilets in which to receive his friends when they call to inquire after his health; and last, but not least, she has taken to the wheel, and actually appears before him in bloomers.
What would his haughty old mother and his austere sister say when they learned this?
There had been quite an argument between the young husband and Sally on the day he received his mother"s letter informing him of her return from abroad, and her intense amazement at his hasty marriage.
"I had always hoped to persuade you to let _me_ pick out a wife for you, Jay, my darling son," she wrote. "I can only hope you have chosen wisely when you took the reins into your own hands. Come and make us a visit, and bring your wife with you. We are very anxious to meet her."
Sally frowned as he read the letter aloud.
Never in the world were two united who were so unsuited to each other.
Why did the fates that are supposed to have the love affairs of mortals in charge, allow the wrong man to marry the wrong woman?
There was one thing over which Sally was exceedingly jubilant, and that was his loss of memory. That he had known such a person as Bernardine Moore, the old basket-maker"s beautiful daughter, was entirely obliterated from his mind.
Some one had mentioned the great tenement-house fire in Jay Gardiner"s presence, and the fact that quite a quaint character, a tipsy basket-maker, had lost his life therein, but the young doctor looked up without the slightest gleam of memory drifting through his brain. Not even when the person who was telling him the story went on to say that the great fire accomplished one good result, however, and that was the wiping out of the wine-house of Jasper Wilde & Son.
"Wilde--Jasper Wilde! It seems to me that I have heard that name before in connection with some unpleasant transaction," said Doctor Gardiner, slowly.
"Oh, no doubt. You"ve probably read the name in the papers connected with some street brawl. Jasper Wilde, the son, is a well-dressed tough."
"Before going to see your mother, why not spend a few weeks at Newport with Sally," suggested Mrs. Pendleton to the doctor. "You know she has not been away on her wedding-trip yet."
He laughed a dry, mirthless laugh.
"She can go if she likes," he replied. "I can endure it."
Mrs. Pendleton bit her lip to keep back the angry retort, but wisely made no reply.
"It will never do to have the least disagreement with my wealthy, haughty son-in-law, if I can help it," she said to herself. "Especially as my husband is in such sore straits, and may have to come to him for a loan any day."
The following week Jay Gardiner and his bride reached Newport. The season was at its height. Yachts crowded the harbor; the hotels were filled to overflowing; every one who intended going to Newport was there now, and all seemed carried away on the eddying current of pleasure.
Young Mrs. Gardiner--_nee_ the pretty Sally Pendleton--plunged into the vortex of pleasure, and if her greed for admiration was not satisfied with the attention she received, it never would be.
Young Mrs. Gardiner knew no restraint. Her society was everywhere sought after. She was courted in every direction, and she took it all as her just due, by virtue of her marriage with the handsome millionaire, whom all the married belles were envying her, sighing to one another:
"Oh! how handsome he is--how elegant! and what a lordly manner he has!
But, best of all, he lets his wife do just as she pleases."
But the older and wiser ones shook their heads sagaciously, declaring they scented danger afar off.
Little did they dream that the terrible calamity was nearer than they had antic.i.p.ated.
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
Although, outwardly, young Mrs. Gardiner and her handsome husband lived ideal lives, yet could one have taken a peep behind the scenes, they would have seen that all was not gold that glittered.
In their own apartments, out of sight of the world"s sharp eyes, Jay Gardiner and his wife used each other with the scantest possible courtesy. He never descended to the vulgarity of having words with her, though she did her utmost to provoke him to quarrel, saying to herself that anything was better than that dead calm, that haughty way he had of completely ignoring her in his elegant apartments.
During what every one believed to be the most blissful of honey-moons, Sally learned to hate her proud husband with a deadly hatred.
On the evening Mr. Victor Lamont made his appearance at the Ocean House, there was to be a grand ball given in honor of the guests, and, as every one had hoped, Mr. Lamont strolled in during the course of the evening, accompanied by mine host, who was over head and ears with delight in having such an honored guest stopping at his hotel.