He was hardly aware that Dr Drummond had again
left his seat when he started violently at a clap on the
shoulder.
"Finlay!" exclaimed the Doctor. "You won't be offended?
No--you couldn't be offended!"
It was half-jocular, half-anxious, wholly inexplicable.
"At what," asked Hugh Finlay, "should I be offended?"
Again, with a deep sigh, the Doctor dropped into his
chair. "I see I must begin at the beginning," he said.
But Finlay, with sudden intuition, had risen and stood
before him trembling, with a hand against the mantelpiece.
"No," he said, "if you have anything to tell me of
importance, for God's sake begin at the end."
Some vibration in his voice went straight to the heart
of the Doctor, banishing as it travelled, every irrelevant
thing that it encountered.
"Then the end is this, Finlay," he said. "The young woman,
Miss Christie Cameron, whom you were so wilfully bound
and determined to marry, has thrown you over--that is,
if you will give her back her word--has jilted you--that
is, if you'll let her away. Has thought entirely better
of the matter."
("He stared out of his great sockets of eyes as if the
sky had fallen," Dr Drummond would say, recounting it.)
"For--for what reason?" asked Finlay, hardly yet able to
distinguish between the sound of disaster and the sense
that lay beneath.
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