“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.