"A villain, did you say, Cressingham?" repeated Raeburn, his lips pale and quivering as he spoke.
"Yes; surely a villain—a double-dyed villain!" reiterated the former. "Did you ever imagine you were anything else? My share in the transaction is bad enough—I allow it; but it's nothing to yours, Raeburn—nothing; for I would assuredly have married the girl, if she would have had me. My conduct in the business was perhaps that of a profligate: but yours—yours, Raeburn—was unquestionably that," repeated Cressingham, coolly and considerately—"that of a double-dyed villain." Saying this, he turned on his heel and left him.
The instances just mentioned were the first and the only ones in which Raeburn had yet suffered the martyrdom of hearing the opinion of others of his conduct with regard to Miss Rutherford; but this was a species of torture to which he was now to be frequently exposed. On this very occasion, he had not proceeded twenty yards from the place where Cressingham had left him, when he encountered the medical gentleman who had been attending his victim. This person, conjecturing, from the direction whence Raeburn was coming, that he had been inquiring for his patient, accosted him, and asked him how she was.
Raeburn, it will readily be believed, would have gone fifty miles about—ay, even on his bare knees—rather than have exposed himself to this meeting; but it had taken place, and he now, therefore, endeavoured to suppress his agitation, and tried to look as composed as possible; and it was with this forced and affected calmness that he replied to the physician's inquiry, that his patient was dead.
"Dead!" said the kind-hearted man; "ah, poor girl! I knew it was at hand, but I thought she might have lived for at least twenty-four hours yet. Well, then," he went on, and now looking Raeburn sternly in the face, "since it is so, I will tell you, Mr Raeburn, my opinion of what your conduct has been in this most heartrending affair; for you are deeply implicated in it. My opinion, then, is, sir, that it has been most infamous, most atrocious; and, regarding yourself, sir, I certainly think you one of the most heartless ruffians that ever lived."
"Ruffian, sir!" repeated Raeburn, affecting to feel insulted, although he was quaking in every limb—"ruffian, sir! I shall have satisfaction for this, sir, you may depend upon it."
"Satisfaction, you scoundrel!" exclaimed Dr Henderson—the name of Fanny's medical attendant—"what right have you to satisfaction? Who would condescend to fight such a dastardly and disgraceful villain as you are? But, mark me, sir," he went on; "I know who the lady's friends are; and you may depend upon it, I shall not lose a moment in writing to inform them of everything connected with this shocking affair, and of your conduct towards the deceased. Take my word for that, sir. And, sir, not only will I do this, but I will inform every one I know of your conduct, until you are scouted from all society."
To this Raeburn made no other reply than by turning on his heel, and muttering the words, "Dr Henderson, you shall hear from me."
"Hear from you, you basest and most infamous of men!" said the doctor, looking with an expression of the most profound contempt and hatred after Raeburn, as he receded; "the less we hear of you or from you, the better for yourself, you ruffian."
Faithfully redeeming his pledge, Dr Henderson, on the following day, wrote to Fanny's father, whose address he had learned from her while attending her, and detailed all he knew—and this was nearly all that was to be known—regarding Raeburn's conduct to his daughter; for, although the latter had never accused Raeburn to him of ill-treatment, the doctor had, by connecting the broken hints which she had dropped from time to time, and especially by marking certain expressions which escaped her during her temporary fits of delirium, arrived at a knowledge of the whole truth. Having executed this part of his threat, Dr Henderson set diligently about the remaining portion, which was to give all the publicity he could to the story of Raeburn's infamy; and so successful was he in his efforts in this way, that he had the satisfaction in a very short time of seeing him shunned by all his acquaintances, and completely debarred from respectable society.