“About Peter Kennedy. He really suits me better than any of the other doctors here. Lansdowne is a soft-soapy grinning pessimist, with an all-conquering air. He tells you how ill you are as if it doesn’t matter since he has warned you, and will come constantly to remind you. There is a Dr. Lushington who, I believe, knows more than all of them put together, but he is a delicate man himself, overburdened with children, and cramped with small means. He gives me fresh heartache, I am so sorry for him all the time he is with me. Lansdowne and Lushington have each young partners or assistants, straight from London hospitals, smelling of iodoform, talking in abstruse medical or surgical terms, nosing for operations, as dogs for truffles. You don’t want me to have any of these, do you?” “I want you to do what you please, now and always.” “Even if it pleases me that Peter Kennedy should medicine and make love to me?” “Even that. Does he make love to you?” “What did he tell you?” “That he adored you—that you treated him like a dog.” “He gives me amyl, bromide. He was only a country practitioner when I first knew him, with a gift for music, but not for diagnosis.” “And now?” “He has done more reading, medical reading, since I have been here than in all his life before. Treatises on the heart; all that have ever been written. He is really studying, he intends to take a higher degree. In music too, I have given him an impetus.” Gabriel was obviously, nevertheless, not quite satisfied, started a tentative “but,” and would perhaps have enquired whether ultimately it would be for Peter Kennedy’s good that she had done so much for him. Anne, however, intervened, coming down dressed for the journey, very agitated at finding the two together. She gave him no opportunity for further conversation, monopolising the attention of the whole household, in searching for something she had mislaid, which it was eventually decided had possibly been left in Hampstead! Her conscience reproached her for her behaviour over lunch, and she found the cup of tea which Margaret pressed upon her before she left “delicious.” “I do so much like this Chinese tea, ever so much better than the Indian. You remember, Gabriel, don’t you, that rough tea we used to have from Pounds?...” And she told a wholly irrelevant anecdote of rival grocers and their wares. She betrayed altogether in the last ten minutes an uneasy semi-consciousness that her visit had not been a great success and talked quickly in belated apology. “You’ve been so kind to me. I am afraid I have not responded as I ought. My silly headache, which of course I never exactly had ... you know what I mean, don’t you? And I did no credit to your beautiful lunch.” Margaret succeeded in assuring her that she had behaved exactly as a guest should, whilst Gabriel stood by silently. “I hope you will come again,” she said, and Anne replied nervously, noncommittal.