CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE DOCTOR HIMSELF AGAIN.

On the morning after his return to Poppleton, Dick Birch went down to the Port, and resumed his duties as the business man of Eugene, just as though nothing had happened. People were glad to see him; they said so, and most of them knew he was “all right” from the beginning. There was not the shadow of a stain resting upon him. Some enthusiastic individuals proposed to give him a public reception--welcome him with speeches, and glorify him in the choicest rhetoric of the Poppleton orators; but those who knew Dick best were sure that he would not submit to the operation.

Eugene’s income had been accumulating with fearful rapidity, and the balance in his favor in the Poppleton Bank was absolutely appalling. The affrighted _millionnaire_ began to reproach himself for his own laziness. The chapel and the church, the missionaries and the Sisters of Charity, seemed hardly to affect the mighty balance, and the model houses paid their own way. Something must be done to mitigate the severity of the balance, which reproached the unfortunate owner for his want of enterprise.

Dick sympathized with him, and before dinner time the balance was happily disposed of, and the bewildered man of money dined in peace. A public library and reading-room were projected. A site for an elegant building was agreed upon, and an investment for its perpetual support and improvement was arranged. Several vacant rooms in the bank building were at once hired for the temporary accommodation of the library, for the projected edifice could not be completed before the autumn of the next year.

“Of course this will be called the ‘Hungerford Library,’” said Dick Birch, when the plan was satisfactorily adjusted.

“Bah!”

“Why not?”

“I will not permit my name to be applied to any public institution.”

“But the people who are to receive the benefit of this library will insist upon it.”

“I will never consent. It shall be called the ‘Poppleton Library,’ or something of that sort.”

“Just think of the immense value of this institution to the people. Here will be a large library, from which the whole town may take books without cost. Here will be a great hall, warmed and lighted, open day and evening, supplied with all the newspapers and magazines of the day, where the citizens can sit and read publications which would cost them a hundred dollars a year to obtain individually. Here is a conversation-room, where they can meet to talk politics, religion, ships, and factories. Don’t you think they will be grateful to you?”

“Doubtless.”

“They will insist upon having your name in connection with the enterprise.”

“If that were the alternative, I wouldn’t do it at all. I intend to do this thing for the public good, not for my own glory. Giving my own name to such an institution, seems to me very much like putting ‘esquire’ to my own signature. I will not do it, or let it be done.”

“Of course you will do as you please.”

“I know of nothing that would make me feel cheaper and more insignificant, than to see my name in great letters on the proposed building. I abhor the very idea.”

Eugene was decided, and he was sincere. He was not the man who offered to give a large sum of money to any town that would adopt his name; he could not have been even a friend of such a man. The balance was effectually used up, and Hungerford and his friend went to dinner with better appetites for the good work they had done. Dick had dropped back very easily into his old position, which was not less satisfactory to the family than to himself.

Julia was in no respect altered from what she had been before Dick’s withdrawal from the mansion. She treated him now with the intimacy of friendship, but he did not seem at all disposed to improve his opportunity. He did not attempt to make love to her, resorted to no expedients to win her favor; in fact, he conducted himself in the most commonplace manner, precisely as though he did not intend to take advantage of Dr. Lynch’s absence.

“Dick, we must get up a list of books for the public library,” said Eugene, after dinner.

“That is no small matter.”

“No; and as you and I have enough to do, I propose to leave the selection to another.”

“I am entirely willing.”

“I will carry what catalogues we have to Mary, and let her do this work. She has good taste and good judgment.”

“Excellent!” laughed Dick.

“John Porter will assist her.”

“I think you had better assist her yourself.”

Eugene took the catalogues and went to The Great Bell. He laid his bundle on the table in the parlor, and came away without saying a word about the public library. He forgot it.

“To-morrow has come, Mary,” said he, as he took her hand, and kissed her cheek.

Mary was troubled.

“It has come too soon.”

“Don’t you love me?”

“I cannot deny it.”

“Would you deny it?”

“If I could I might be more true and just to you.”

“If you love me, it is all I ask. You consent?”

“I do not--yet.”

“Why not, Mary?”

“I do not deserve you.”

“Do I deserve you?”

“O, yes!”

“Then would you deprive me of my desert?”

“Eugene, my heart says yes; my reason says no.”

“The heart before the reason, Mary.”

“I am afraid that, months or years hence, when this step cannot be recalled, you will see me as I am. You will think of the odious events which once separated us, and wish you had passed me by on the other side.”

“You wrong me, Mary.”

“It would not be unnatural, Eugene. You know what a break there was in the love which began while we were children. Even now you wish this had not happened.”

“I do,” replied Eugene, candidly. “If I could to-day be reduced to poverty, and possess you as you were before Buckstone stepped into your path, I would take the poverty, and rejoicingly clasp my treasure to my heart.”

Mary shrank from him.

“Then you do not regard me as you did before?” said she, sadly, and with quivering lip.

“I love you the same; do not shrink from me. I have only said that I would give the poor boon of wealth to have you as you were. This cannot be. Mary, I am cool, self-possessed; I am not carried away by any silly enthusiasm. I have thought calmly and dispassionately of our marriage. I have compared you with all the women I know--with all I have seen here and abroad. You are beautiful; if it were for your beauty alone I sought you, I could distrust myself. It is not. You have a Christian heart. You were my ideal of a woman. You are still. What has happened does not affect the qualities for which I seek you. Morally, mentally, spiritually, you are the same. I love you in spite of what has come between us. I cannot love another. I could not help looking coldly upon the fairest and most accomplished, even after I knew that you were the wife of another. If I had been doomed never to see you again, I should still have cherished the Mary I loved, and never thought of supplying her place with another. I feel what I say; I mean it. I am not making a special plea; I am only telling the simple truth.”

She did not shrink from him now.

“Could I have known that you still loved me,” replied she, as he took her hand again, “I should not have done violence to my own heart as I