"You must make haste, sir," urged Miss Pendleton sharply. "See, he is beginning to sink." The minister did make haste. Never before were those solemn words so rapidly uttered. How strange it was that fate should have let that ceremony go on to the end which would spread ruin and desolation before it! The last words were uttered. The minister of God slowly but solemnly pronounced Sally Pendleton Jay Gardiner's lawfully wedded wife. The doctors did not congratulate the bride, but sprung to the assistance of the young physician, who had fallen back upon his pillow gasping for breath. One held a sponge saturated with a strong liquid to his nostrils, while another escorted the minister, the bride, and her mother from the apartment. "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 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. 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.