Magda felt herself flushing a little under the implied rebuke—­as much with annoyance as anything else.  She knew that she was not really the heartless type of woman he inferred her to be, to whom the fate of her dependents was only of importance in so far as it affected her own personal comfort, and she resented the injustice of his assumption that she was.

She had been so bewildered and dazed by the suddenness of the accident and by the blow she herself had received that she had hardly yet collected her thoughts sufficiently to envisage the possible consequences to others.

With feminine perverseness she promptly decided that nothing would induce her to explain matters.  If this detestably superior individual chose to think her utterly heartless and selfish—­why, let him think so!

“And the car?” she asked in a tone of deliberate indifference.  “That’s quite as important as the chauffeur.”

“More so, surely?”—­with polite irony.  “The car, I am sorry to say, will take a good deal of repairing.  At present it’s still in the middle of the street with red lights fore and aft.  It can’t be moved till the fog lifts.”

“What a nuisance!  How on earth am I to get home?”

“There are such things as taxis”—­suggestively.  “Later, when it clears a bit, I’ll send out for one.”

“Thanks.  I’m afraid I’m giving you a lot of trouble.”

He did not hastily disclaim the idea as most men would have done.

“That can’t be helped,” he returned bluntly.

Magda felt herself colouring again.  This man was insufferable!

“Evidently the role of knight-errant is new to you,” she observed.

“Quite true.  I’m not in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress.  But how did you guess?”—­with interest.

“Because you do it with such a very bad grace,” she flashed at him.

He smiled—­and once more Magda was aware of the sense of familiarity even with that whimsical, crooked smile.

“I see,” he replied composedly.  “Then you think I ought to have been overwhelmed with delight that your car cannoned into my bus—­incidentally I barked my shins badly in the general mix-up—­and that I had to haul you out and bring you round from a faint and so on?”

The question—­without trimmings—­was unanswerable.  But to Magda, London’s spoiled child, conscious that there were men who would have given half their fortune for the chance to render a like service, and then counted themselves amply rewarded by the subsequent hour or two alone with her, the question was merely provocative.

“Some men would have been,” she returned calmly.

“Ah!  Just because you are the Wielitzska, I suppose?”

She stared at him in blank astonishment.

“You knew—­you knew who I was all the time?” she gasped.

“Certainly I knew.”

“Then—­then——­”

“Then why wasn’t I suitably impressed?” he suggested drily.