The Shadowy Third

 

Margaret Randolph, a young nurse, traveling back to New York from her home in a southern city, recounts the story of an experience that has changed her life. Chosen by a famous surgeon, Dr. Maradick, to be a private nurse for his invalid wife the young woman understandably feels "a romantic flutter." He tells Margaret that his wife has mental problems and is never allowed to be alone. When Margaret arrives at the Maradick's home and while left alone in the library, she sees a child, a little girl of great delicacy and charm who flits away without speaking. When she meets Mrs Maradick she immediately feels a sympathetic connection to her and mentions that she has seen the little girl. Mrs Maradick tells her that the child is the apparition of her own dead daughter, Dorothea. She is convinced that the Doctor has killed her for the inheritance from her previous marriage that would only go to Dorothea unless she should die. Dr. Maradick has his wife removed to a mental asylum where she dies but his intrigues fail and he dies when the ghostly child's skipping rope entangles him on the staircase.