ather paler than usual,
perhaps, but my cheeks were faintly pink, and my lips red. I suppose
while one is young one can suffer a good deal and one's face tell no
secret.

We were to make a very early start to examine the wonderful motor-car
which Lord Robert West had advised Aunt Lil to buy. Afterwards she and
Lisa and I had planned to do a little shopping, because it would seem a
waste of time to be in Paris and bring nothing away from the shops. But
when I tapped at Lisa's door (dreading, yet wishing, to have our first
greeting over), it appeared that she had a bad headache and did not want
to go with us to see the Rajah's automobile. While I was with her Aunt
Lil came in, looking very bright and handsome.

She was "so sorry" for Lisa, and not at all sorry for me (how little she
guessed!); and before taking me away with her, promised to come back
after it was settled about the car, to see whether Lisa were well enough
by that time for the shopping expedition.

The automobile really was a "magnificent animal," as Aunt Lil said, and
it took her just two minutes, after examining it from bonnet to
tool-boxes, to make up her mind that she could not be happy without it.
It was sixty horsepower, and of a world-renowned make; but that was a
detail. _Any_ car could be powerful and well made; every car should be,
or you would not pay for it; but she had never seen one before with such
heavenly little arrangements for luggage and lunch; while as for the
gold toilet things, in a pale grey suede case, they were beyond words,
and she must have them--the motor also, of course, since it went with
them.

So that was decided; and she and I drove back to the hotel, while the
two men went to the Automobile Club, of which Lord Bob was an honorary
member.

If possible, all formalities were to be got through with the Rajah's
agent and the car paid for. At two o'clock, when we were to meet the men
at the Ritz for luncheon, they were to let us know whether everything
had been successfully arranged: and, if so, Aunt Lil wanted the party to
motor to Calais in her new automobile, instead of going by train. Lord
Bob would drive, but he meant to hire a chauffeur recommended by the
Club, so that he would not have to stop behind and see to getting the
car across the Channel in a cargo boat.

Aunt Lil was very much excited over this idea, as she always is over
anything new, and if I was rather quiet and uninterested, she was too
much occupied