“You don’t think that of me--of me!” she gasped, her lips all white again. She got to her feet excitedly. “You shall not believe it of me.”
“No, I did not say I believed that,” the other remarked almost casually. “But if I did believe it, I don’t know that it would make much difference to me. Fate, or God Almighty, or whatever it was, had stacked the cards against you. When I said it was wicked, I meant you did wrong in rushing away from your husband and coming to me. I suppose you have definitely left your husband--eh? You’ve ‘left’ him, as they say?”
He had an incorrigible sense of humour, as well as an infinite common sense. He wanted to break this spell of tense emotion which possessed her. So he pursued a new course.
“Don’t you think it’s rather hard on me?” he continued. “I’m a lone man in this house, with only one old woman to protect me, and I’m unmarried. I’ve a reputation to lose, and there are lots of mothers and daughters hereabouts. Besides, a medical practice is hard to get and not easy to keep. What do you mean by making a refuge of me, when there’s nothing for me in it, not even the satisfaction of going into the Divorce Court with you? You wicked Mrs. Mazarine!”
“Oh, don’t speak like that!” Louise interjected. “Please don’t. Don’t scold me. I had to come. I was going mad.”
The Young Doctor had the case well in hand. He had eased the terrible tension; he was slowly reducing her to the normal. It was the only thing to do.
“What did Mazarine do or say to you that made you run away? Come now, didn’t you first make up your mind to go to Slow Down Ranch--to Orlando?”
She flushed. “Yes, but only for a minute. Then I thought of you, because I knew you could help me as no one else could. Everybody believes in you. But then Li Choo--”
“Oh, Li Choo! So Li Choo comes into this, eh? So he said fly to Orlando, eh? Well, that’s what he would do. But why Li Choo--a Chinaman? Tell me, what does Li Choo know?”
Quickly she told him the story of the day when Joel Mazarine had almost surprised her in Orlando’s room; how Li Choo had saved the situation by falling down the staircase with the priceless porcelain, and how Mazarine had kicked him--“manhandled” him, as they say in the West.