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?" "I've had as much as I want. Take the things away." "I wonder what's come to him?" mused the woman as his quick steps receded from the house, and she was left with the rejected dishes. A consciousness came dimly penetrating to her hazy brain that there was some change upon him. What it was, or where it lay, she did not define. It was unusual for his strong firm fingers to drop a glass; it was still more unusual for him to explain cause and effect. "The jar slipped from my fingers." "I've had as much as I want. I must go off to a patient." It was quite out of the order of routine for Dr. Rane to be explanatory to his servant on any subject whatever: and perhaps it was his having been so in these two instances that impressed Phillis. "How quick he must have eaten his dinner!" Phillis nearly dropped the dish. The words were spoken close behind her, and she had believed herself alone in the house. Turning, she saw Jelly, standing half in, half out of the window. "Well, I'm sure!" cried Phillis, in wrath. "You needn't come startling a body in that way, Mrs. Jelly. How did you know but the doctor might be at table?" "I've just seen him go down the lane," returned Jelly, who had plenty of time for gossiping with her neighbours, and had come strolling over the fence now with no other object. "Has he had his dinner? It's but the other minute he was in at our house." "He has had as much as he means to have," answered Phillis, her anger evaporating, for she liked a gossip also. "I'm sure it's not worth the trouble of serving meals, if they are to be left in this fashion. It was the same thing at breakfast."