Mr.Ridley obeyed.

Doctor Hillhouse gave the driver a hurried direction, and sprang in after him.
They rode in silence for the whole distance to Mr.Ridley's dwelling.
One glance at the face of the sick woman was enough to show Doctor Hillhouse that she was beyond the reach of professional skill.

Her disease, as he had before seen, had taken on its worst form, and was running its fatal course with a malignant impetuosity it was impossible to arrest.

The wild fever of anxiety occasioned by her husband's absence during that dreadful night, the cold to which, in her delirium of fear, she had exposed herself, the great shock her delicate organism had sustained at a time when even the slightest disturbance might lead to serious consequences,--all these causes combined had so broken down her vitality and poisoned her blood that nature had no force strong enough to rally against the enemies of her life.
A groan that sounded like a wail of desperation broke from Mr.Ridley's lips as he came in with the doctor and looked at the death-stricken countenance of his wife.

The two physicians gazed at each other with ominous faces, and stood silent and helpless at the bedside.
When Doctor Hillhouse hurried away ten minutes afterward he knew that he had looked for the last time upon his patient.