CHAPTER V.
Relates the triumph of the Doctor, and the manner in which he achieved it.—Lawyer Skinwell's death-bed, and what happened there.
THE evening was warm and fine; and the gentle slope, on the top of which Dr. Rowel's establishment stood, was coloured with the setting light of the sun; as, with the glass-doors, which opened from his drawing-room upon the lawn, thrown wide back to admit the scarcely stirring air,—the doctor himself sat near it and alone, in an attitude of thought, meditating mischief. A dash of vermilion-coloured light shot athwart the lower part of his person, while the upper portion was covered with that kind of illuminated shadow, that clear obscure, which, to the delicate perception of a painter, constitutes one of Nature's greatest beauties. But the thoughts and reflections in which the doctor indulged were deeply at variance with those which the scene before him, and the character of the hour, were calculated to suggest. It was not with him—“how much do I now enjoy?” but the morose reflection—“how long shall I enjoy it?” His present happiness was swallowed up in the anticipation of possible coming evil.
“What matters it,” thought he, “when tomorrow, perhaps, that treacherous villain may make everything known? Nay, how do I know he has not done so already? True, I have had him watched. I know everything he has done, and something that he has said; and this very day again he is gone to York. To-morrow I may wake to be arrested,—to have my house searched, and Woodruff set at liberty.”
As the doctor then mused, the door opened, and a stranger was ushered in.
“Doctor,” said he in a hurried tone, “lawyer Skinwell has just got thrown out of his gig, and is almost killed. He has been insensible ever since.”
“Ah! Impossible!” exclaimed Rowel starting to his feet with surprise. “Are you sure, man?”
“It is quite true, sir,” replied he, as though scarcely knowing what to make of the doctor's strange manner, the latter gentleman regarding him for a moment with an eye of unaccountable incredulity; for the idea had instantaneously flashed across his mind that he might be deceived by his own imagination, and that it was only the devil that was tempting him. A minute or two elapsed; when, recovering himself, he replied in a more subdued and professional tone, “I will be there immediately,” on which the man disappeared.
“Now then,” thought Rowel, “is the time! Had I asked for it,—designed it myself,—I could not have made it better. Thrown out, and insensible. He cannot, therefore, know anything of what I do. And as nobody else knows of our differences, nobody will think otherwise than that I am doing for the best. Who shall question my practice? Even if it be inquired into,—if it come to anything that way,—they may arraign my judgment, but can do nothing else.”