"I wish I had never said a syllable about going away until I was off," cried he in his off-hand manner--a pleasanter and more sociable manner than Dr. Rane's. "The news has been noised abroad, and the whole place is upon me; asking this, that, and the other. One man comes and wants to know if I'll sell my furniture; another thinks he'd like the house as it stands. My patients are up in arms;--say I'm doing it to kill them. I shall have some of them in a fever before the day's over."
"Perhaps you won't go, after all," observed Dr. Rane.
"Not go! How can I help going? I'm elected to the post. Why, it's what I've been looking out for ever so long--almost ever since I came here. No, no, Rane: a short time, and Dallory Ham will have seen the last of me."
He hastened across the road to his house, like a man who has the world's work on his busy shoulders. Dr. Rane's thoughts, as he glanced after him, reverted to the mental argument he had held in his chamber, and he unconsciously resumed it, putting himself in the place of the unknown, unhappy writer, as before.
"It's almost keener than the death itself--if the motive was to injure Alexander in his profession, or drive him from the place--to know that he, or she--Mrs. North--might have spared her pains! Heavens! what remorse it must be!--to commit a crime, and then find there was no necessity for doing it!"
Dr. Rane passed his white handkerchief over his brow--the day was very warm--and turned into his house. Phillis once more placed the dinner on the table, and he sat down to it.
But not a mouthful could he swallow; his throat felt like so much dried-chip, and the food would not go down. Phillis, who was coming in for something or other, saw him leave his plate and rise from table.
"Is the fowl not tender, sir?"
"Tender?" he responded, as though the sense of the question had not reached him, and paused. "Oh, it's tender enough: but I must go off to a patient. Get your own dinner, Phillis."
"Surely you'll come back to yours, sir?"