“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed the doctor harshly. “And you think her the most attractive woman you ever saw.”
“Granted. But that does not prove that I love her. No; I love my profession. James Scarlett’s health is my idol, until I have cured him—if I ever do. Then I shall look out for another patient, Miss Raleigh.”
“It is my turn now to laugh, doctor. Why, what a transparent man you are!”
“I hope so,” he replied. “But you will stay to dinner this evening?”
“No, madam; I shall go to town.”
“You will not!” said Aunt Sophia, smiling. “It would be too cowardly for you.”
“No, no; I must go,” he said. “She would make me her slave, and trample upon my best instincts. It would not do, Miss Raleigh. As it is, I am free. Poor enough, heaven knows! but independent, and—I hope—a gentleman.”
“Of course,” said Aunt Sophia gravely.
“Granting that I could win her—the idea seems contemptible presumption—what would follow? In her eyes, as well as in those of the whole world, I should have sacrificed my independence. I should have degraded myself; and in place of being spoken of in future as a slightly clever, eccentric doctor, I should sink into a successful fortune-hunter—a man admitted into the society that receives his wife, as her lapdog would be, at the end of a string. I couldn’t do it, my dear madam; I could not bear it; for the galling part would be that I deserved my fate.”
“I hope you do not exaggerate your patients’ cases as you do your own, doctor.”