'Oh, do you really think so?' She hesitated. 'Do you know what I have been feeling ever since I came here? I've been feeling that you are exactly like one of Miss Pinckney's heroes.'
'No, I say, really!' said James, revolted.
'Oh, but you are! When you jumped through that window it gave me quite a start. You were so exactly like Claude Masterton in Heather o' the Hills.'
'I have not read Heather o' the Hills,' said James, with a shudder.
'He was very strong and quiet, with deep, dark, sad eyes.'
James did not explain that his eyes were sad because her society gave him a pain in the neck. He merely laughed scornfully.
'So now, I suppose,' he said, 'a car will come and knock you down and I shall carry you gently into the house and lay you—Look out!' he cried.
It was too late. She was lying in a little huddled heap at his feet. Round the corner a large automobile had come bowling, keeping with an almost affected precision to the wrong side of the road. It was now receding into the distance, the occupant of the tonneau, a stout red-faced gentleman in a fur coat, leaning out over the back. He had bared his head—not, one fears, as a pretty gesture of respect and regret, but because he was using his hat to hide the number plate.
The dog Toto was unfortunately uninjured.
James carried the girl gently into the house and laid her on the sofa in the morning-room. He rang the bell and the apple-cheeked housekeeper appeared.