“Did I get held up?” she repeated. “My dear, I walked miles—miles, I tell you!—in that hideous fog. And then found I’d been walking entirely in the wrong direction! I fetched up somewhere down Notting Hill Gate way, and at last by the help of heaven and a policeman discovered the Tube station. So here I am. But if I could have come across a taxi I’d have been ready to buy it, I was so tired!”
“Poor dear!” Magda was duly sympathetic. “We’ll have some tea. You’ll stay, Davilof?”
“I think not, thanks. I’m dining out”—with a glance at his watch. “And I shan’t have too much time to get home and change as it is.”
Magda held out her hand.
“Good-bye, then. Thank you for keeping me company till Gillian came.”
There was a sudden sweetness of gratitude in the glance she threw at him which fired his blood. He caught her hand and carried it to his lips.
“The thanks are mine,” he said in a stifled voice. And swinging round on his heel he left the room abruptly, quite omitting to make his farewells to Mrs. Grey.
The latter looked across at Magda with a gleam of mirth in her brown eyes. Then she shook her head reprovingly.
“Will you never learn wisdom, Magda?” she asked, subsiding into a chair and extending a pair of neatly shod feet to the fire’s warmth.
Magda laughed a little.