DICK BIRCH AND LADY. Pine Hill could hardly be the same without Dr. Lynch that it had been with him; but he went there no more. His name was not even mentioned after a few days; by general consent all allusions to him were avoided. It was not pleasant to think of him, for his conduct had been loathsome. Eugene trembled when he thought of Julia’s escape from death by poison; and he trembled when he thought of her escape from a union with the doctor, which had at least been possible, and which would have been worse than poison. This second treachery on the part of the late demigod of Pine Hill revived the remembrance of the first. The doctor’s penitence had been a deception. He had never even regretted his first failure to ruin Dick Birch, except so far as it subjected him to humiliation, and rendered his rival more powerful and dangerous than before. His purpose was to win the hand of Julia, and to this everything else had been made subservient. The occupants of the Pine Hill mansion realized that the honored visitor, the beloved physician, had been a hypocrite; even his devotion to Julia and her mother, in sickness, was grounded on a selfish policy. Though Dr. Lynch did love Julia with all the earnestness of which his vile nature was capable, he lost even the credit of this genuine sentiment. All the doctor’s base plans were not yet apparent to the Hungerfords; and they could not perceive that he was actuated by any other motive than jealousy--the desire to possess Julia. There was but little prospect that he would inherit the contingent half million, as it appeared to them, and therefore the conduct of the doctor seemed to be less contemptible than it really was, as the sequel will show. Dick Birch and Eugene Hungerford supposed the doctor would not tamely submit to his banishment from Pine Hill. He loved Julia; he had wooed her as an enthusiastic lover, though she doubted his affection. It was a cruel fate to be excluded from her presence, though it would have been the height of impudence for a man who had attempted to commit a murder to bestow another thought upon her. But the doctor was not like other men; and the genius for treachery and deceit, which had carried him safely through his former trials, might again be called into action to explain away the poison, and to make peace with the Hungerfords on the ruin of Dick Birch. Dr. Lynch had threatened to appeal to the people--to the public sentiment of Poppleton--for his justification. He was bold enough and unscrupulous enough to do so. It would be an easy thing for a man so powerful as the popular physician to make the people believe in his wrongs. He could readily persuade them that he was the victim of a conspiracy; that Birch, from jealousy, had invented the illusion of the poisoned globules. The fact that no legal steps had been taken by the family--that not even Dick Birch had publicly proclaimed the story--would operate in the doctor’s favor.