“I don’t smoke cigars,” Gabriel said abruptly when Dr. Kennedy made a feint of carrying out her wishes. Peter shrugged his shoulders.
“She told me to find them for you.”
“Has she had attacks like this before?” Gabriel asked, after a pause. Peter answered gloomily:
“And will again if she is allowed to overtire herself by driving for hours in the sun, and then encouraged to sit through a long dinner, talking all the time.”
“She ought not to have played?” Peter Kennedy threw himself on to the sofa, desecrating it, bringing an angry flush to Gabriel’s brow. But when he groaned and said:
“If one could only do anything for her!”
Gabriel forgave him in that instant. Gabriel had lived all his life with an invalid. Attacks of hysteria and faintness had been his daily menu for years.
“But surely an attack of faintness is not very unusual or alarming? My sister often faints....”
“She isn’t Margaret Capel, is she?”
“You ... you knew Mrs. Capel before she came to Carbies?”