"Jane! Jane! come at once. I want to give Mrs. Thorburn a hypoderm of brandy."
Dr. Sunbury heard the call, and came too. He obeyed a look from the doctor, and taking Thorburn by the arm, almost dragged him from the room. Jane came with the brandy, with salts, with the doctor's electrical appliances; but it was too late. Mrs. Thorburn breathed an hour or two longer, and then, without a word, a look, or a sigh, stopped breathing.
"It is all over," said Dr. Forman, going out on the landing to speak to Dr. Sunbury.
Thorburn went away the night of his wife's death.
To Dr. Sunbury was intrusted the terrible task of telling Priscilla. He came forth from that interview ten years older, and tottering as he walked.
The affair was hushed up, and the world at large was no wiser about it. Thorburn and Priscilla left East Harrowby, ostensibly on account of Thorburn's breaking down. Before they left, a marriage ceremony, the most painful that could be imagined, was performed between them in Dr. Sunbury's study, with Dr. Forman for a witness.
But never afterward were Thorburn and Priscilla happy. They were good, they loved each other, they were thrown upon each other for comfort—but between them sat the ghost of the dead woman, who had come to claim her happiness, and found another woman in possession of it.