"No, sir; you didn't," the old man retorted. "I said you might come if you liked."
Windham stood up, trembling, and replied with suppressed passion:
"I came on your invitation. I did not come to be insulted."
"Tut, tut," the doctor rejoined. "You needn't be so hoity-toity; you haven't much occasion; sit down. Have you been making any more of your 'mistakes,' as you call them?"
Windham answered emphatically: "No!"
"Are you going to?" the doctor continued.
"No, sir; I am not," Windham replied, with angry decision.
"Well, I wouldn't; you've done enough," the doctor commented roughly. "You call it a mistake, but I call it blind stupidity, worse than many crimes. Mary is worth three of Agnes, to begin with; but it would be just as bad if she were a doll or a dolt. Any fellow out of swaddling-clothes, who has brains in his body, and isn't made of wood, ought to know that passion is as hard a fact as hunger, and no more to be left out of account. You were bound to know the chances were that it would have to be reckoned with, first or last, and you deliberately took the risk of wrecking two women's lives. I don't say anything about your own; you richly deserve all you got, and all that's coming to you. If law could be made to conform to abstract justice, it would rank your offence worse than many for which men pay behind bars."
He went out abruptly, and after a few minutes returned with Agnes, who came in lingering, and apparently unwilling.
"Here, Agnes, I am going out," he said. "I've been giving this young man my opinion of him, and haven't any more time to waste. You can tell him what you think of him, and send him off."