“I have a most important appointment,” said he, raising his hat and achieving politeness by an enormous effort, “and if your business is urgent you’d better get into the car.  I’m going to Conduit Street.”

She slipped into the car like a snake, and Carthew, beautifully unaware that he had two passengers, simultaneously drove off.

If a snake, she was a very slim, blushing and confused snake,—­short, too, for a python.  And she had a turned-up nose, and was quite young.  Her scales were stylish.  And, although certainly abashed, apprehensive and timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs of terrible determination, of ruthlessness, of an ambition that nothing could thwart.  Mr. Prohack might have been alarmed, but fortunately he was getting used to driving in closed cars with young women, and so could keep his nerve.  Moreover, he enjoyed these experiences, being a man of simple tastes and not too analytical of good fortune when it came his way.

“It’s very good of you to see me like this,” said the girl, in the voice of a rapid brook with a pebbly bed.  “My name is Winstock, and I’ve called about the car.”

“The car?  What car?”

“The motor-car accident at Putney, you know.”

“Ah!”

“Yes.”

“Just so.  Just so.  You are the owner-driver of the other car.”

“Yes.”

“I think you ought to have seen my wife.  It is really she who is the owner of this car.  As you are aware, I wasn’t in the accident myself, and I don’t know anything about it.  Besides, it’s entirely in the hands of the insurance company and the solicitors.  You are employing a solicitor, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I suppose it’s by his advice that you’ve come to see me.”

“Well, I’m afraid it isn’t.”

“What!” cried Mr. Prohack.  “If it isn’t by his advice you may well be afraid.  Do you know you’ve done a most improper thing?  Most improper.  I can’t possibly listen to you. You may go behind your lawyer’s back.  But I can’t.  And also there’s the insurance company.”  Mr. Prohack lifted the rug which had fallen away from her short skirts.

“I think solicitors and companies and things are so silly,” said Miss Winstock, whose eyes had not moved from the floor-mat.  “Thank you.”  The ‘thank you’ was in respect to the rug.

“So they are,” Mr. Prohack agreed.

“That was why I thought it would be better to come straight to you.”  For the first time she glanced at him; a baffling glance, a glance that somehow had the effect of transferring some of the apprehension in her own breast to that of Mr. Prohack.

“Well,” said he, in a departmental tone recalling Whitehall.  “Will you kindly say what you have to say?”

“Can I speak confidentially?”

Mr. Prohack raised his hands and laughed in what he hoped was a sardonic manner.

“I give you young women up,” he murmured.  “Yes, I give you up.  You’re my enemy.  We’re at law.  And you want to talk confidentially!  How can I tell whether I can let you talk confidentially until I’ve heard what you’re going to say?”