The old doctor leaned back and looked from one to the other, studying them openly and keenly.  When he was satisfied, he ordered Windham to take a chair near the window and told Agnes she might go out.  She faced him a moment; then went away with her straight, proud carriage.  The doctor finished something he was at, then got his pipe and filled and lighted it, backed up against the chimney-piece, and stood eying Windham with something more than his usual scowl.

“Well, young man,” he asked, finally, “what did you come here for?”

“I came here because you asked me to.”

“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.”

He went out, and banged the door after him.  Agnes leaned against it, and stood there downcast and perfectly still.  Windham sat sunk together, as the doctor had left him, waiting for her to speak.  But she did not, and after a while he got up and stood by the high desk, looking at her.  Finally he spoke low: 

“Are you going to scold me, too?  Mary has discarded me, and your uncle says I am a miserable sinner, and ought to be in the penitentiary.  I don’t deny it; but if I went there it would be for your sake.  Do you condemn me, too?  Have you no mercy for me?”

A flush spread slowly over her pale face.  Then she replied softly: