"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 XXXIV.
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 passion in her breast had been coolly nipped in the bud by his indifference, which had stung her to the quick.