Excerpt from Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake.
What is the author's purpose in writing that each of the three men had once been on the verge of ?
A) to give a symbolic reference to blood, which is the color of a rose
B) to justify Colonel Killigrew’s name…He once would ’kill’ to get his girl.
C) to express the extent each man would go to win the heart of Widow Wycherly
D) to demonstrate that each man was capable of murder under the right circumstances