“Pay her what she wants.” “I can get her down a good bit.” He had no definite idea but to stop her tears, carry out her wishes. In a measure he acted cleverly, going backward and forward between dining and drawing-room negotiating terms. Mrs. Roope said she had no wish to expose Mrs. Capel, and repeated, “I came here to do her a kindness.” In the end two hundred and fifty pounds was agreed upon, a hundred down and a hundred and fifty when the decree was made absolute, this latter represented by a post-dated cheque. Peter had to write the cheques himself, it was as much as Margaret could do to sign them. Her hands were shaking and her eyelids red, the sight swept away all his conventions. “You’ve got to go to bed and stay there,” he told her when he came back to her finally. He forgot everything but that she looked terribly ill and exhausted, and that he was her physician. “You need not have a minute’s more anxiety. I know the type. She has gone. She won’t bother you again. She’s taken her hundred pounds. That’s a lot to the woman who makes her money by shillings. That absent treatment business is a pound a week at the outside. There’s a limited number of fools who pay for isolated visits. Did you see her boots? They didn’t look like affluence! and her cotton gloves! She will have another hundred and fifty if nothing comes out, if she keeps her mouth shut until the 30th of May. You are quite safe. Don’t look so woebegone. I ... I can’t bear it.” He turned his back to her. “What will Gabriel say?” “The most priggish thing he can think of,” he answered roughly. “He doesn’t look at things in the same way you do.” “Do you think I don’t know his superiority?” “Now you are angry, offended.” “You’ve done the right thing. You are not in the health for any big annoyance.” She was holding her side with both hands. “I believe the pain is coming on again.” “Oh; no, it isn’t.” But he moved nearer to her. No contradiction or denial warded off the attack. She bore it badly too, pulse and colour evidencing her collapse. Hurriedly and perhaps without sufficient thought he rang for Stevens, called for hot water, gave her her first injection of morphia. Stevens knew or guessed what had been going on, and took a gloomy view. Every one in the house knew of Mrs. Roope’s visit. “It will be the death of her.” “No, it won’t,” he said savagely. “You do what you are told.” “I ’ope I know my duty,” she replied primly. “I’m sure you do, but not the effect of a morphia injection,” he retorted. He said Stevens knew nothing of the effect of a morphia injection, but he was not quite sure of it himself in those days and with such a patient. The immediate effect was instantaneous. Margaret grew easier, she smiled at him with her pale lips: “How wonderful,” she said. He made her stay as she was for half an hour, then helped to carry her to bed. Stevens said she required no help in undressing her.