"You would make a very good nurse, I should think," commented Magda,
somewhat mollified.

"Thanks," was all he vouchsafed in answer.

He busied himself pouring out tea, then brought her cup and placed it
beside her on a quaint little table of Chinese Chippendale.

"Mrs. Braithwaite--my housekeeper--is looking after your chauffeur in
the kitchen," he observed presently. "Possibly you may be interested to
hear"--sarcastically--"that he wasn't hurt in the smash-up."

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