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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...of the fall, he closed the door behind him, re-entered his office, went at once to a screened-off corner of the room, and washed his hands vigorously. This done, he picked up his hat and a black satchel, preparatory to visiting paralytic Mrs. Belden. He was half-way to the stricken woman's house before his head cleared, and he recollected that he had left Kate Meagley in his inner office. The Middle Miss Meagley--her momentary excitement over the medico-clerical controversy giving place once more to the gnawing shame that devoured her--walked, as in a dream, from the deserted rooms and bent her steps mechanically toward the Folger house. At any other time a scene such as she had witnessed between the two men would have sent her, hot-foot, through the town, beginning with her mother and sisters, regaling them and other choice spirits with the story, and shining in reflected glory as the sole spectator of the fray. No better idea of her present state of mind could be given than by saying that the quarrel and Dale's attack had left her thoughts utterly. Those same thoughts were stretched upon the most terrible torture-apparatus known in all the annals of Pain,--the rack of Self-loathing. That she, Kate Meagley,--most fastidious of five ultra-modest sisters; model (self-constituted) of Pitvale femininity; Propriety's doughty champion--that she should have been guilty of an action which now luridly recurred to her as though it were the deed of an absolute and most objectionable stranger,--was an awful Horror. It is natural, in moments of extreme self-contempt, to put out desperate hands and drag the nearest outsider down into the depths with us. Happy those of us who can go so far as to leave the hapless fallen vicarious sufferer writhing there, and ourselves ri...