The Shadowy Third, and Other StoriesGlasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
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The Shadowy Third, and Other Stories
Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
American fiction; Ghost stories; Short stories, American
“Oh, dear, yes. They have been married only a little over a year, and in
the beginning she used to come sometimes to the hospital and wait
outside while the doctor made his visits. She was a very sweet-looking
woman then—not exactly pretty, but fair and slight, with the loveliest
smile, I think, I have ever seen. In those first months she was so much
in love that we used to laugh about it among ourselves. To see her face
light up when the doctor came out of the hospital and crossed the
pavement to his car, was as good as a play. We never tired of watching
her—I wasn’t superintendent then, so I had more time to look out of the
window while I was on day duty. Once or twice she brought her little
girl in to see one of the patients. The child was so much like her that
you would have known them anywhere for mother and daughter.”
I had heard that Mrs. Maradick was a widow, with one child, when she
first met the doctor, and I asked now, still seeking an illumination I
had not found, “There was a great deal of money, wasn’t there?”
“A great fortune. If she hadn’t been so attractive, people would have
said, I suppose, that Doctor Maradick married her for her money. Only,”
she appeared to make an effort of memory, “I believe I’ve heard somehow
that it was all left in trust away from Mrs. Maradick if she married
again. I can’t, to save my life, remember just how it was; but it was a
queer will, I know, and Mrs. Maradick wasn’t to come into the money
unless the child didn’t live to grow up. The pity of it—”
A young nurse came into the office to ask for something—the keys, I
think, of the operating-room, and Miss Hemphill broke off inconclusively
as she hurried out of the door. I was sorry that she left off just when
she did. Poor Mrs. Maradick! Perhaps I was too emotional, but even
before I saw her I had begun to feel her pathos and her strangeness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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