Margot (sweetly):  “No ...?”

Peter:  “Not a bit!  You are a regular woman.  I thought differently of you somehow!”

Margot:  “You thought I was a dog-fancier or a rough-rider, did you, with a good thick skin?”

Peter:  “I fail to understand you!  Are you alluding to the manners of my horses?”

Margot:  “No, to your friends.”

Peter:  “Ah!  Ah!  Nous y sommes! ...  How can you be so childish! 
What did Mrs. Bo say to you?”

Margot:  “Oh, spare me from going into your friends’ affairs!”

Peter (flushed with temper, but trying to control himself):  “What does it matter what an old woman says whose nose has been put out of joint in the hunting-field?”

Margot:  “You told me she was young.”

Peter:  “What an awful lie!  You said she was pretty and I disagreed with you.”  Silence.  “What did she say to you?  I tell you she is jealous of you in the hunting-field!”

Margot:  “No, she’s not; she’s jealous of me in your bedroom and says I don’t know right from wrong.”

Peter (startled at first and then bursting out laughing):  “There’s nothing very original about that!”

Margot (indignantly):  “Do you mean to say that it’s a platitude?  And that I don’t know right from wrong?”

Peter (taking my hands and kissing them with a sigh of intense relief):  “I wonder!”

Margot (getting up):  “Well, after that, nothing will induce me to stay down here or ride any of your horses ever again!  No regiment of soldiers will keep me!”

Peter:  “Really, darling, how can you be so foolish!  Who would ever think it wrong to go and see a poor devil ill in bed!  You had to ride my horse back to its stable and it was your duty to come and ask after me and thank me for all my kindness to you and the good horses I’ve put you on!”

Margot:  “Evidently in this country I am not wanted, Mrs. Bo said so; and you ought to have warned me you were in love with her.  You said I was not the woman you thought I was:  well, I can say the same of you!”

At this Peter got up and all his laughter disappeared.

“Do you mean what you say?  Is this the impression you got from talking to Mrs. Bo?”

Margot:  “Yes.”

Peter:  “In that case I will go and see her and ask her which of the two of you is lying!  If it’s you, you needn’t bother yourself to leave this country, for I shall sell my horses. ...I wish to God I had never met you!”

I felt very uncomfortable and unhappy, as in my heart I knew that Mrs. Bo had never said Peter was in love with her; she had not alluded to his feelings for her at all.  I got up to stop him leaving the room and put myself in front of the door.

Margot:  “Really, why make scenes!  There is nothing so tiring; and you know quite well you are ill and ought to go to bed.  Is there any object in going round the country discussing me?”