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want to know him. But she had the uncomfortable conviction that he wasn't a forgettable man. If only because he roused her to a degree of dislike and loathing such as she had never felt for anyone before.
    It was mutual, she knew. It was as much as he could do to be civil to her—and so far he hadn't tried very hard.
    Gillian was a warm-hearted girl. She liked people very readily as a rule. But it was impossible to like someone as insufferable as Mark Barlow, with his exalted opinion of himself and his scornful opinion of her as a mere nurse who had yet to prove her ability to his satisfaction.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    The second day at Greenvale was much more enjoyable. Gillian found herself slipping easily into the routine and feeling more at ease with the other nurses who were beginning to accept her now that they found she was an efficient and cheerful worker as well as a friendly girl. She had shaken off the new-girl feeling.
    She didn't see Steve. She had no occasion to visit Theatre and he apparently had no reason to come down to the floor where she was working. Gillian didn't mind that he made no attempt to see her, she didn't feel that it was a deliberate policy. He might not be on duty that day. Mark Barlow wasn't operating and it seemed that they usually worked together as a team.
    Mrs Maddox was still on the monitor. She was making good progress but she was reacting to a routine pain-killing drug with some excitability. Naturally a jolly woman, buoyed up by morphine, she was making little of her obvious discomfort and was ready to turn everything into a huge joke.
    Having spent a lively half-hour with the big woman, giving her a blanket-bath and making her as comfortable as possible for drip and drainage tubes and electrodes, and trying to calm her with very little success, Gillian emerged from the room, dark-blue eyes sparkling with suppressed merriment from some of the outrageous things that Mrs Maddox had been saying. She almost collided with Mark Barlow.
    'Oops! Sorry!' she declared gaily, hastily swerving the trolley out of his path before realising that the tall man in the dark suit was the surgeon. He regarded her with a sardonic lift of an eyebrow, disapproval in the grey eyes. 'Oh, it's you,' she said without enthusiasm.
    His eyes narrowed at the sudden change of tone. 'I don't think you are going to be an asset to this place,' he said coldly, glancing through the open door at his patient who was flushed and bright-eyed and beaming, obviously over-stimulated. He had heard the loud voice, and gusts of painful laughter as he strode along the corridor and had wondered what on earth was going on in Room Four. 'One would think that you know nothing at all about post-operative nursing,' he swept on angrily. 'I believe I stressed that Mrs Maddox was to be kept very quiet for a few days. She's a very excitable woman with a history of hypertension. Things must have changed considerably at St Christopher's if its nurses behave like third-rate music-hall entertainers instead of doing their work in an orderly manner and having proper care for their patients!'
    Without giving her a chance to defend herself, or explain the reason for Mrs Maddox's excitability, he strode into the room. Gillian was speechless with indignation anyway. She glared at his broad and totally uncompromising back as he stood at the foot of the bed, chart in hand, talking in clipped tones to his patient.
    He had been deliberately offensive. Gillian trundled the trolley along to the clinical room seething, her heart pounding with hatred, on the point of rushing off to the office with her notice. She simply couldn't work with such a man. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. He didn't have a good word for her. He had the lowest possible opinion of her nursing ability. He didn't like her at all and took every opportunity to be unpleasant.
    Automatically, she cleared the trolley and put things away, hands shaking with suppressed fury. Penny Hughes