rting on a motor tour. Lady Turnour was miles above it, however. So
far as she was concerned, one would have thought that the car ran
itself; that at sight of her and Sir Samuel, the arbiters of its
destiny, its heart began to beat, its body to tremble with delight at
the honour in store for it.

"Tell him to shut the windows," said her ladyship, when she was settled
in her place. "Does he think I'm going to travel on a day like this with
all the wind on the Riviera blowing my head off?"

The imperial order was passed on to "him," who was addressed as Bane,
or Dane, or something of that ilk; and I was sorry for poor Sir Samuel,
whose face showed how little he enjoyed the prospect of being cooped up
in a glass box.

"A day like this" meant that there was a wind which no one under fifty
had any business to know came out of the east, for it arrived from a sky
blue as a vast, inverted cup of turquoise. The sea was a cup, too; a cup
of gold glittering where the Esterel mountains rimmed it, and full to
the frothing brim of blue spilt by the sky.

Perhaps there was a hint of keenness in the breeze, and the palms in the
hotel garden were whispering to each other about it, while they rocked
the roses tangled among their fans; yet it seemed to me that the
whispers were not of complaint, but of joy--joy of life, joy of beauty,
and joy of the spring. The air smelled of a thousand flowers, this air
that Lady Turnour shunned as if it were poison, and brought me a sense
of happiness and adventure fresh as the morning. I knew I had no right
to the feeling, because this wasn't my adventure. I was only in it on
sufferance, to oil the wheels of it, so to speak, for my betters; yet
golden joy ran through all my veins as gaily, as generously, as if I
were a princess instead of a lady's-maid.

Why on earth I was happy, I didn't know, for it was perfectly clear that
I was going to have a horrid time; but I pitied everybody who wasn't
young, and starting off on a motor tour, even if on fifty francs a month
"all found."

I pitied Lady Turnour because she was herself; I pitied Sir Samuel
because he was married to her; I pitied the people in the big hotel,
who spent their afternoons and evenings playing bridge with all the
windows hermetically sealed, while there was a world like this out of
doors; and I wasn't sure yet whether I pitied the chauffeur or not.

He didn't look particularly sorry for himself, as he took his seat on my
right.