She was furious with him, and with Dr. Kennedy for having brought him. Peter Kennedy had acted well, according to his lights. He did not wish to turn his beloved patient over to his all-conquering partner, but the more infatuated he became about her the less he trusted his own knowledge. “A bad case of angina, extensive valvular disease. Keep her as quiet as possible, she ought not to be contradicted. Get a nurse or a couple of nurses for her. Daughter of Edgar Rysam, the American millionaire, isn’t she? Seems to have taken quite a fancy to you. Extraordinary creatures these so-called clever women! You ought to make a good thing out of the case.” Kennedy went back to Carbies after Dr. Lansdowne dropped him, made his way back as quickly as possible. Margaret had bidden him return to tell her what had been said. “Not that I believe in him or in anything he may have told you. He did not even listen to my heart, he was so busy talking and grinning and reassuring me. What did he tell you? That he heard a murmur? I am so sick of that murmur. I have been hearing of it ever since I was a child.” Peter slurred over everything Lansdowne had said to him, except that she must be kept quiet; she must not allow herself to get excited. He implored her to keep very quiet. She laughed and asked whether he thought he had a calmative influence? He put his arms about her for all that she resisted him and blubbered over her like the great baby he was. “I adore you, I want to take care of you, and you won’t look at anybody but him.” She pushed him away, told him she could not bear to be touched. “If it hadn’t been for him? Tell me, if it hadn’t been for Gabriel Stanton it would have been me, wouldn’t it? You do like me a little, don’t you?” It was impossible to keep him at a proper distance. “Like you! not particularly. Why should I? You are very troublesome and presumptuous.” She could not deal with him as she did with Gabriel. To this young country doctor, ten years before I knew him and he had acquired wisdom, men and women were just men and women, no more and no less. He had fallen headlong in love with Margaret, and when he saw he had, as he said, no chance, he could not be brought to believe that Gabriel Stanton was not her lover. He was demonstratively primitive, and many of his so-called medical visits she spent in fighting his advances. He knew that what she had to give she was giving to Gabriel Stanton, because she told him so, made no secret of it, but was for ever asking “If it hadn’t been for him? If you’d met me first?” One would have thought that Margaret, Gabriel’s “fair pale Margaret,” would have resented or at least tired of this rough persistent wooing, but if this were so there was nothing in her conduct to show it.