The doctor struggled to free himself. He felt as if he was slowly suffocating, but she held him fast.
“Oh, how good it seems to again hold a dear head like this,” she continued, patting him heavily. The doctor groaned.
“And don’t my petsie, wetsie, feel good?” she asked, kissing the bald spot on his head. “Is he sick? Oh, I am such a wonderful nurse. Where is the pain, ducky?”
She let up on her hold of him for a moment, and he partly struggled to his feet, but she caught him again.
“Let me go, woman!” he roared, “you must be mad, stark, staring mad! Marry you? Why, I’d poison you within a week.”
“Woman!” she gasped, “oh, that I should live to hear my Arthur call me woman!” She made one grand effort to hold him, but there came a sound like the distant report of a pistol; with a shriek she loosened her arms, and the doctor ignominiously fled. Fled out through the green door, leaving it open behind him; around the porch, into his study, where he bolted and barred the doors and windows. Then he sat down and laughed. Laughed until the tears came at the spectacle he must have presented upon his knees, with the widow hugging him for dear life.
To what good angel he owed his happy release he knew not, but the widow knew only too well. The long suffering stays at last rebelled, and at the most critical moment revenged themselves by bursting.
So ended the widow’s courtship. She sat long that night gazing at Samuel’s portrait. “To think he should have witnessed my humiliation,” she murmured, and then to her excited fancy, one eye began to take on that leer which had been so distasteful to her, and sighing heavily, she arose and turned the picture toward the wall.
CHAPTER VII.
The next morning the doctor removed his goods and chattels to “The Five Gables,” and took an office on the principal street, getting his meals wherever hunger overtook him. He knew that he was welcome to stay at “The Gables” forever if he liked, but he did not care to. He was conscious of his own strength. He knew that he could live in the same house with Victoria and never tell her of his love, but in some way she might discover it, and then all intercourse, however Platonic, would be at an end between them. She would despise him for a false friend. She could never be made to see his love in the same light with which he received it, so it were best that he should go to “The Gables” as little as possible.