Gordon roused himself, however.  “Be more careful another time, Emma,” he said sharply.

Emma tossed her head.  “Doctor Elliot moved jest as I was coming with the cup,” she said in a thin, waspish voice.

“He did no such thing,” Gordon said harshly, “and if he had, it was your business to be careful.  Get Doctor Elliot another cup of tea.”

Emma obeyed with a jerk.  She set the cup and saucer down beside James’s plate as hard as she dared, and James at the first sip found that the tea was salted.  However, he said nothing.  Gordon after his outburst had resumed his former state of apathy, and was eating and drinking like a machine, whose works were rusty and almost run down.  He could not trouble him with such an absurdity.  Then, too, he was too vexed to please the girl so much.  He forced himself to drink the tea without a grimace, knowing that Emma’s eyes were upon him.  But the climax was almost reached.  That night when on his return he wished to change his collar before dinner, he found every one with the buttonholes torn.  It was skilfully done, so skilfully that no one could have declared positively that it had not been done accidentally in the laundry.  James would not appear at the dinner-table in a soiled collar, and was forced to hurry out to the village store and purchase new ones.  These, with the exception of the one he put on, he locked in his trunk.  He was late for dinner, and the soup was quite cold.  When Doctor Gordon complained irritably, Emma replied with one of her characteristic tosses of the head that she couldn’t help it, Doctor Elliot was late.  James said nothing.  He swallowed his luke-warm soup in silence.  He began to wonder what he could do.  He did not wish to complain to Doctor Gordon, especially as the result might be the dismissal of Emma, and he felt that he could say nothing to Clemency about it.  Clemency appeared at the dinner-table, but she looked pale and forlorn, and said good evening to James without lifting her eyes.  When her uncle asked if her head was better, she said, “Yes, thank you,” in a spiritless tone.  She ate almost nothing.  After dinner, James had a call to make, and, on his return, entered by the office door.  He found Gordon fast asleep in his chair, with the dog at his feet.  The dog started up at sight of James, but he motioned him down, and went softly out into the hall.  There was a light there, but none in the parlor.  James heard distinctly a little sob from the parlor.  He hesitated a moment, then he entered the room.  It was suffused with moonlight.  All the pale objects stood out like ghosts.  Clemency by the window, in a little white wool house-gown, looked, ghostly.

James went straight across to her, pulled up a chair beside her, seated himself, and pulled one of her little hands away from her face almost roughly, and held it firmly in spite of her weak attempt to remove it.  “Now, Clemency,” he said in a determined voice, “this has gone quite far enough.  You told your uncle that you wished to break your engagement to me.  I have no wish to coerce you.  If you really do not want to marry me, why, I must make the best of it, but I have a right to know the reason why, and I will know it.”