The absolutism with which this was said made his words final; and she slowly rose.
“And so I too have failed,” she cried; but seeing his face and noting the yearning look with which he regarded her, she summoned up her courage afresh and finally said: “They have told me—I have heard—that this man made some strange threats to you in parting. Is that the reason why you do not like to interfere or to proclaim more widely your opinion of him?”
The doctor smiled, but there was no answer in the smile and she went vehemently on: “Such threats, Oswald, are futile. No one less sensitive than you would heed them for a moment. You are above any one’s aspersion, even on an old charge like that.”
“Men will believe anything,” he muttered.
“But men will not believe that. Do we not all know how faithfully you attended Mrs. Earle in her last illness, and how much skill you displayed? I remember it well, if the rest of the community do not, and I say you need not fear anything this man can bring up against you. His influence in town does not go so far as that.”
But the doctor with unrelieved sadness answered with decision, “I cannot make this man my enemy; he has too venomous a tongue.” And she watching him knew that Polly’s doom was fixed and her son’s also, and began slowly to draw down her veil.
But he, noticing this action, though he had seemed to be blind to many others she had made, turned upon her with such an entreating look that she faltered and let her hand fall in deep emotion.
“Grace,” he pleaded, “Grace, I cannot let you go without one kindly word to make the solitude which must settle upon this room after your departure, less unendurable. You distrust me.”
“Does this visit here look like distrust?” she gently asked.
“And you hate me! But——”