PART I

TOLD BY RALPH MORAY

I

A CHAPTER OF SURPRISES

"WANTED, LADIES, TO CONDUCT. An amateur

automobilist (English, titled) who drives his

own motor-car accommodating five persons,

offers to conduct two or three ladies, Americans

preferred, to any picturesque centres in Europe which they

may desire to visit. Car has capacity for carrying small luggage,

and is of best type. Journeys of about 100 miles a day. Novel

and delightful way of travelling; owner of car well up in history,

art, and architecture of different countries. Inclusive terms five

guineas a day each, or slight reduction made for extensive

trip. Address--"

When Terry had read aloud thus far, I hastily interrupted him. I wasn't

quite ready yet for him to see that address. The thing needed a little

leading up to; and by way of getting him quickly and safely on to a side

rack I burst into a shout of laughter, so loud and so sudden that he

looked up from the little pink Riviera newspaper of which I was the

proud proprietor, to stare at me.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

I subsided. "The idea struck me so forcibly," said I. "Jolly clever,

isn't it?"

"It's a fake, of course," said Terry. "No fellow would be ass enough to

advertise himself like that in earnest. Probably the thing's been put in

for a bet, or else it's a practical joke."

I had been aware that this, or something like it, would come, but now

that the crisis was at hand I felt qualmish. Terry--known to strangers

as Lord Terence Barrymore--is the best and most delightful chap in the

world, as well as one of the best looking, but like several other

Irishmen he is, to put it mildly, rather hard to manage, especially when

you want to do him a good turn. I had been trying to do him one without

his knowing it, and in such a way that he couldn't escape when he did

know. But the success of my scheme was now being dandled on the knees of

the gods, and at any instant it might fall off to break like an egg.

"I believe it's genuine," I began gingerly, almost wishing that I hadn't

purposely put the pink paper where Terry would be sure to pick it up.

"And I don't see why you should call the advertiser in my paper an ass.

If you were hard up, and had a motor-car--"

"I am hard up, and I have a motor-car."

"What I was going to say is this: wouldn't it be much better to turn

your car into the means of making an honest living, and at the same time

having some rattling good fun, rather than sell the thing for less than

half cost, and not only get no fun at all, but not know how to get out

of the scrape in which you've landed yourself?"

It was Terry's turn to laugh now, which he did, though not uproariously,

as I had. "One would think the ass was a friend of yours, by your

enthusiasm in defending him," said he.

"I'm only putting the case to you in the way I thought you'd see it most

clearly," I persisted mildly. "But, as a matter of fact, the 'ass' as

you call him, _is_ my friend, a very intimate friend indeed."

"Didn't know you had any intimate friends but me, anyhow owners of

motor-cars, you old owl," remarked Terry. "I must say in your defence,

though, it isn't like you to have friends who advertise themselves as

titled couriers."

"If you're obliged to start a shop I suppose it's legitimate to put your

best goods in the windows, and arrange them as attractively as you can

to appeal to the public," I argued. "This is the same thing. Besides,

my friend isn't advertising himself. Somebody is 'running him'--doing it

for him; wants him to get on, you know--just as I do you."

Terry gave me a quick glance; but my face (which is blond and said to be

singularly youthful for a man of twenty-nine) was, I flatter myself, as

innocent as that of a choir-boy who has just delivered himself of a high

soprano note. Nevertheless, the end was coming. I felt it in the

electric tingle of the air.

"Do you mind telling me your friend's name, or is he a secret?"

"Perhaps the address at the end of the advertisement will be

enlightening."

Terry had dropped the paper on the grass by the side of his _chaise

longue_, but now he picked it up again, and began searching for the

place which he had lost. I, in my _chaise longue_ under the same

magnolia tree, gazed at him from under my tilted Panama. Terry is tall

and dark. Stretched out in the basket chair, he looked very big and

rather formidable. Beside him, I felt a small and reedy person. I really

hoped he would not give me much trouble. The day was too hot to cope

with troublesome people, especially if you were fond of them, for then

you were the more likely to lose your head.

But the beginning was not encouraging. Terry proceeded to read the end

of the advertisement aloud. "Address X. Y. Z., Châlet des Pins, Cap

Martin." Then he said something which did not go at all with the

weather. Why is it that so many bad words begin with D or H? One almost

gets to think that they are letters for respectable people to avoid.

"Hang it all, Ralph," he went on, after the explosion, "I must say I

don't like your taste in jokes. This is a bit too steep."

I sat up straight, with a leg on each side of the chair, and looked

reproaches. "I thought," I said slowly, "that when your brother behaved

like such a--well, we won't specify what--you asked, I might even say

begged, for my advice, and promised in a midnight conversation under

this very tree to take it, no matter how disagreeable it might prove."

"I did; but--"

"There's no such word as 'but.' Last year I advised you not to put your

money into West Africans. You put it in. What was the consequence? You

regretted it, and as your brother showed no very keen interest in your

career, you decided that you couldn't afford to stop in the Guards, so

you cut the Army. This year I advised you not to play that system of

yours and Raleigh's at Monte Carlo, or if you must have a go at it, to

stick to roulette and five franc stakes. Instead of listening to me, you

listened to him. What were the consequences?"

"For goodness sake don't moralize. I know well enough what they were.

Ruin. And it doesn't gild the pill to remember that I deserved to

swallow it."

"If only you'd swallowed the advice instead! It would have slipped down

more easily, poor old boy. But you swore to bolt the next dose without a

groan. I said I'd try and think of a better plan than selling your

Panhard, and going out to help work an African farm on the proceeds.

Well, I _have_ thought of a plan, and there you have the proof of my

combined solicitude and ingenuity, in my own paper."

"Don't shoot off big words at me."

"I'm a journalist; my father before me was a journalist, and got his

silly old baronetcy by being a journalist. _I'm_ one still, and have

saved up quite a little competency on big words and potted phrases. I've

collected a great many practical ideas in my experience. I want to make

you a present of some of them, if only you'll have them."

"Do you call this advertisement a practical idea? You can't for a minute

suppose that I'd be found dead carting a lot of American or other women

whom I don't know about Europe in my car, and taking their beastly

money?"

"If you drove properly, you wouldn't be found dead; and you would know

them," I had begun, when there was a ring at the gate bell, and the

high wall of the garden abruptly opened to admit a tidal wave of chiffon

and muslin.

Terry and I were both so taken aback at this unexpected inundation that

for a moment we lay still in our chairs and stared, with our hats tipped

over our eyes and our pipes in our mouths. We were not accustomed to

afternoon calls or any other time-of-day calls from chiffon and muslin

at the Châlet des Pins, therefore our first impression was that the

tidal wave had overflowed through my gate by mistake, and would promptly

retire in disorder at sight of us. But not at all. It swept up the path,

in pink, pale green, and white billows, frothing at the edges with lace.

There was a lot of it--a bewildering lot. It was all train, and big,

flowery hats, and wonderful transparent parasols, which you felt you

ought to see through, and couldn't. Before it was upon us, Terry and I

had sprung up in self-defence, our pipes burning holes in our pockets,

our Panamas in our hands.

Now the inundation divided itself into separate wavelets, the last

lagging behind, crested by a foaming parasol, which hid all details,

except a general white muslin filminess. But Terry and I had not much

chance to observe the third billow. Our attention was caught by the

first glittering rush of pink and emerald spray.

Out of it a voice spoke--an American voice; and then, with a lacy whirl,

a parasol rose like a stage curtain. The green wave was a lady; a

marvellous lady. The pink wave was a child with a brown face, two long

brown plaits, and pink silk legs, also pink shoes.

"We've come in answer to X. Y. Z.'s advertisement in this morning's

_Riviera Sun_. Now which of you two gentlemen put it in?" began the

lady, with gay coquetry which played over each of us in turn. Oh yes,

she was wonderful. She had hair of the brightest auburn that ever

crowned a human head. It was done in undulations, with a fat ring in the

middle of her forehead, between two beautifully arched black eyebrows.

Her skin was very white, her cheeks were very pink, and her lips were

very coralline. Everything about her was "very." Out of a plump face,

with a small nose that turned up and a chin which was over-round, looked

a pair of big, good-natured, nondescript-coloured eyes, and flashed a

pair of pleasant dimples. At first glance you said "a stout girl of

twenty-five." At the second, you were not sure that the lady wasn't ten

years older. But her waist was so slender that she panted a little in

coming up the path, though the path was by no means steep, and her heels

were so high that there was a suspicion of limp in her walk.

Even to me the lady and her announcement gave a shock, which must have

doubled its effect upon Terry. I was collecting my forces for a reply

when the little brown girl giggled, and I lost myself again. It was only

for an instant, but Terry basely took advantage of that instant in a way

of which I would not have believed him capable.

"You must address yourself to my friend, Sir Ralph Moray," said the

wretched fellow glibly. "His are the car and the title mentioned in the

advertisement of _The Riviera Sun_, which he owns."

My title indeed! A baronetical crumb flung to my father because of a

service to his political party. It had never done anything for me,

except to add ten per cent to my bills at hotels. Now, before I could

speak a word of contradiction, Terry went on. "I am only Mr. Barrymore,"

said he, and he grinned a malicious grin, which said as plainly as

words, "Aha, my boy, I think _that_ rips your little scheme to

smithereens, eh?"

But my presence of mind doesn't often fail for long. "It's Mr. Barrymore

who drives my car for me," I explained. "He's cleverer at it than I, and

he comes cheaper than a professional."

The wonderful white and pink and auburn lady had been looking at Terry

with open admiration; but now the light of interest faded from the

good-natured face under the girlish hat. "O-oh," she commented in a tone

of ingenuous disappointment, "you're only the--the chawffur, then."

I didn't want Terry to sink too low in these possible clients'

estimation, for my canny Scotch mind was working round the fact that

they were probably American heiresses, and an heiress of some sort was a

necessity for the younger brother of that meanest of bachelor peers, the

Marquis of Innisfallen. "He's an amateur chauffeur," I hastened to

explain. "He only does it for me because we're friends, you know; but,"

I added, with a stern and meaning glance at Terry, "I'm unable to

undertake any tours without his assistance. So if we--er--arrange

anything, _Mr. Barrymore_ will be of our party."

"Unfortunately I have an engagement in South Af--" began Terry, when the

parasol of the third member of the party (the one who had lagged behind,

stopping to examine, or seeming to examine a rose-bush) was laid back

upon her white muslin shoulders.

Somehow Terry forgot to finish his sentence, and I forgot to wonder what

the end was to be.

She was only a tall, white girl, simply dressed; yet suddenly the little

garden of the Châlet des Pins, with its high wall draped with crimson

bougainvilla, became a setting for a picture.

The new vision was built on too grand a scale for me, because I stand

only five foot eight in my boots, while she was five foot seven if she

was an inch, but she might have been made expressly for Terry, and he

for her. There was something of the sweet, youthful dignity of Giovanni

Bellini's Madonnas of the Trees about the girl's bearing and the pose of

the white throat; but the face was almost childlike in the candour and

virginal innocence of its large brown eyes. The pure forehead had a halo

of yellow-brown hair, burnished gold where the sun touched it; the lips

were red, with an adorable droop in the corners, and the skin had that

flower-fairness of youth which makes older women's faces look either

sallow or artificial. If we--Terry and I--had not already divined that

the auburn lady got her complexion out of bottles and boxes, we would

have known it with the lifting of that white girl's parasol.

Can a saintly virgin on a golden panel look sulky? I'm not sure, but

this virgin gave the effect of having been reluctantly torn from such a

background, and she looked distinctly sulky, even angelically cross. She

had not wanted to come into my garden, that was plain; and she lagged

behind the others to gaze at a rose-bush, by way of a protest against

the whole expedition. What she saw to disapprove of in me I was at a

loss to guess, but that she did disapprove was evident. The dazzling

brown eyes, with the afternoon sun glinting between their thick dark

fringes, hated me for something;--was it my existence, or my

advertisement? Then they wandered to Terry, and pitied, rather than

spurned. "You poor, handsome, big fellow," they seemed so say, "so you

are that miserable little man's chauffeur! You must be very unfortunate,

or you would have found a better career. I'm so sorry for you."

"Do sit down, please," I said, lest after all it should occur to Terry

to finish that broken sentence of his. "These chairs will be more

comfortable if I straighten their backs up a little. And this seat round

the tree isn't bad. I--I'll tell my servant to send out tea--we were

going to have it soon--and we can talk things over. It will be

pleasanter."

"What a _lovely_ idea!" exclaimed the auburn lady. "Why, of course we

will. Beechy, you take one of those steamer-chairs. I like a high seat

myself. Come, Maida; the gentlemen have asked us to stay to tea, and

we're going to."

Beechy--the little brown girl--subsided with a babyish meekness that

contradicted a wicked laughing imp in her eyes, into one of the _chaises

longues_ which I had brought up from its knees to a sort of "stand and

deliver" attitude. But the tall white girl (the name of "Maida" suited

her singularly well) did not stir an inch. "I think I'll go on if you

don't mind, Aunt Ka--I mean, Kittie," she said in a soft voice that was

as American in its way as the auburn lady's, but a hundred and fifty

times sweeter. I rather fancied that it must have been grown somewhere

in the South, where the sun was warm, and the flowers as luxuriant as

our Riviera blossoms.

"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted her relative peremptorily.

"You'll just stay here with Beechy and me, till we've done our

business."

"But I haven't anything to do with--"

"You're going with us on the trip, anyhow, if we go. Now, come along and

don't make a fuss."

For a moment "Maida" hesitated, then she did come along, and as

obediently as the brown child, though not so willingly, sat down in the

_chaise longue_, carefully arranged for her reception by Terry.

"Evidently a poor relation, or she wouldn't submit to being ordered

about like that," I thought. "Of course, any one might see that she's

too pretty to be an heiress. They don't make them like that. Such

beauties never have a penny to bless themselves with. Just Terry's luck

if he falls in love with her, after all I've done for him, too! But if

this tour does come off, I must try to block _that_ game."

"I expect I'd better introduce myself and my little thirteen-year-old

daughter, and my niece," said the auburn lady, putting down her parasol,

and opening a microscopic fan. "I'm Mrs. Kathryn Stanley Kidder, of

Denver, Colorado. My little girl, here--she's all I've got in the world

since Mr. Kidder died--is Beatrice, but we call her Beechy for short. We

used to spell it B-i-c-e, which Mr. Kidder said was Italian; but people

_would_ pronounce it to rhyme with mice, so now we make it just like the

tree, and then there can't be any mistake. Miss Madeleine Destrey is the

daughter of my dead sister, who was _ever_ so much older than I am of

course; and the way she happened to come over with Beechy and me is

quite a romance; but I guess you'll think I've told you enough about

ourselves."

"It's like the people in old comic pictures who have kind of balloon

things coming out of their mouths, with a verse thoroughly explaining

who they are, isn't it?" remarked Miss Beechy in a little soft, childish

voice, and at least a dozen imps looking out of her eyes all at once.

"Mamma's balloon never collapses."

To break the awkward silence following upon this frank comparison, I

bustled away with hospitable murmurs concerning tea. But, my back once

turned upon the visitors, the pink, white, and green glamour of their

presence floated away from before my eyes like a radiant mist, and I saw

plain fact instead.

By plain fact I mean to denote Félicité, my French cook-housekeeper, my

all of domesticity in the Châlet des Pins.

Félicité might be considered plain by strangers, and thank heaven she is

a fact, or life at my little villa on the Riviera would be a hundred

times less pleasant than it is; but she is nevertheless as near to being

an angel as a fat, elderly, golden-hearted, sweet-natured,

profane-speaking, hot-tempered peasant woman of Provence can possibly

be. Whatever the greatest geniuses of the kitchen can do, Félicité can

and will do, and she has a loyal affection for her undeserving master,

which leads her to attempt miracles and almost invariably to accomplish

them.

There are, however, things which even Félicité cannot do; and it had

suddenly struck me coldly in the sunshine that to produce proper cakes

and rich cream at ten minutes' notice in a creamless and cakeless

bachelor villa, miles from anywhere in particular, might be beyond even

her genius.

I found her in the back garden, forcibly separating the family pet, a

somewhat moth-eaten duck, from the yellow cat whose mouse he had just

annexed by violence.

With language which told me that a considerable quantity of pepper had

got into her disposition (as it does with most cooks, according to my

theory) she was admonishing the delinquent, whom she mercilessly

threatened to behead and cook for dinner that evening. "You have been

spared too long; the best place for you is on the table," I heard her

lecturing the evil cannibal, "though the saints know that you are as

tough as you are wicked, and all the sauce in the Alpes Maritimes would

not make of you a pleasant morsel, especially since you have taken to

eating the cat's mice."

"Félicité," I broke in upon her flood of eloquence, in my most winning

tones. "Something has happened. Three ladies have come unexpectedly to

tea."

The round body straightened itself and stood erect. "Monsieur well knows

that there is no tea; neither he nor the other milord ever take anything

but coffee and whisk--"

"Never mind," said I hastily. "There must be tea, because I asked the

ladies to have some, and they have said yes. There must also be lettuce

sandwiches, and cakes, and cream--plenty, lots, heaps, for five people."

"As well ask that serpent of wickedness, your duck, to lay you five eggs

in as many minutes."

"He isn't my duck; he's yours. You won him in a raffle and adopted him.

I suspect it's a physical impossibility for him to lay eggs; but look

here, Félicité, dear, kind, good Félicité, don't go back on me. Man and

boy I've known you these eighteen months, and you've never failed me

yet. Don't fail me now. I depend on you, you know, and you _must_ do

something--anything--for the honour of the house."

"Does Monsieur think I can command tea, cakes, and cream from the tiles

of the kitchen floor?"

"No; but I firmly believe you can evolve them out of your inner

consciousness. You wouldn't have me lose faith in you?"

"No," said Félicité, whose eyes suddenly brightened with the rapt look

of one inspired. "No; I would not have Monsieur lose faith. I will do

what I can, as Monsieur says, for the honour of the house. Let him go

now to his friends, and make his mind easy. In a quarter of an hour, or

twenty minutes at most, he shall have a feef o'clocky for which he need

not blush."

"Angel!" I ejaculated fervently, patting the substantial shoulder, so

much to be depended upon. Then with a buoyant step I hastened round the

house to rejoin the party in the front garden, where, I anxiously

realized, the tables might have been completely turned during my

absence.

Ready to hurl myself into the breach, if there were one, I came round

the corner of the villa, to meet the unexpected. I had left Terry with

three ladies; I found him with seven.

Evidently he had gone into the drawing-room and fetched chairs, for they

were all sitting down, but they were not being sociable. Mrs. Kidder's

round chin was in the air, and she wore an "I'm as good as you are, if

not better" expression. The imps in Beechy's eyes were critically

cataloguing each detail of the strangers' costumes, and Miss Destrey was

interested in the yellow cat, who had come to tell her the tragic tale

of the stolen mouse.

The new arrivals were English. I can't explain exactly how I knew that,

the moment I clapped eyes on them, but I did; and I felt sure their

nearest male relative must have made money in beer, pickles, or it might

have been corsets or soap. They were that kind; and they had a great

many teeth, especially the daughters, who all three looked exactly

thirty, no more and no less, and were apparently pleasantly conscious of

superlative virtue.

I could see the house they lived in, in England. It would be in

Surbiton, of course, with "extensive grounds." There would be a

Debrett's "Peerage," and a Burke's "Landed Gentry," and a volume of

"Etiquette of Smart Society" on the library shelves, if there was

nothing else; and in the basket on the hall table the visiting cards of

any titled beings of the family's acquaintance would invariably rise to

the top like cream.

"I understand from your friend that it is your advertisement which

appears in _The Riviera Sun_ to-day," began the Mother, whose aspect

demanded a capital M. "You are Sir Ralph Moray, I believe?"

I acknowledged my identity, and the lady continued: "I am Mrs.

Fox-Porston. You will have heard of my husband, no doubt, and I daresay

we know a great many of the same People at Home." (This with a

dust-brush glance which swept the Americans out of the field.) "I think

it is a very excellent idea of yours, Sir Ralph, to travel about the

Continent on your motor-car with a few congenial companions, and I have

brought my daughters with me to-day in the hope that we may arrange a

delightful little tour which--"

"Ting-a-ling" at the gate bell robbed us of Mrs. Fox-Porston's remaining

hope, and gave us two more visitors.

Little had I known what the consequences of one small, pink

advertisement would be! Apparently it bade fair to let loose upon us,

not the dogs of war, but the whole floating feminine population of the

French Riviera. Something must be done, and done promptly, to stem the

rising tide of ladies, or the Châlet des Pins and Terry and I with it,

would be swamped.

I looked at Terry, he looked at me, as we rose like mechanical figures

to indicate our hosthood to the new arrivals.

They were Americans; I could tell by their chins. They had no

complexions and no particular age; they wore blue tissue veils, and

little jingling bags on their belts, which showed that they were not

married, because if they had been, their husbands would have ordered the

little jingling bags into limbo, wherever that may be.

"Good-afternoon," said the leading Blue Veil. "I am Miss Carrie Hood

Woodall, the lady lawyer from Hoboken, who had such a nice little

paragraph in _The Riviera Sun_, close to your advertisement; and this is

my chaperone, Mrs. Elizabeth Boat Cully. We're touring Europe, and we

want to take a trip with you in your automobile, if--"

"Unfortunately, ladies," said I, "the services of--er--my car are

already engaged to Mrs. Kidder, of Colorado, and her party. Isn't it so,

Barrymore?"

"Yes," replied Terry stoutly. And that "yes" even if inadvertent, was

equivalent I considered, to sign and seal.

Mrs. Kidder beamed like an understudy for _The Riviera Sun_. Beechy

twinkled demurely, and tossed her plaits over her shoulder. Even Miss

Destrey, the white goddess, deigned to smile, straight at Terry and no

other.

At this moment Félicité appeared with a tray. Whipped cream frothed over

the brow of a brown jug like a white wig on the forehead of a judge;

lettuce showed pale green through filmy sandwiches; small round cakes

were piled, crisp and appetizing, on a cracked Sèvres dish; early

strawberries glowed red among their own leaves. Talk of the marengo

trick! It was nothing to this. The miracle had been duly performed;

but--there were only five cups.

Mrs. Fox-Porston and her daughters, Miss Carrie Hood Woodall and her

chaperone, took the hint and their leave; and the companions of the

future were left alone together to talk over their plans.

"Lock the gate, Félicité," said I. "Do make haste!" And she did. Dear

Félicité!

II

A CHAPTER OF PLANS

So it is that Fate calmly arranges our lives in spite of us. Although no

details of the coming trip were settled during what remained of our new

employers' visit, that was their fault and the fault of a singularly

premature sunset, rather than mine, or even Terry's; and we both felt

that it came to the same thing. We were in honour bound to "personally

conduct" Mrs. Kidder, Miss Beechy Kidder, and Miss Destrey towards

whatever point of the compass a guiding finger of theirs should signify.

It has always been my motto to take Father Time by the fore-lock, for

fear he should cut it off, or get away, or play some other trick upon

me, which the cantankerous old chap (no parent of mine!) is fond

of doing. Therefore, if I could, I would have had terms, destination,

day and hour of starting definitely arranged before that

miraculously-produced tea of Félicité's had turned to tannin. But man

may not walk through a solid wall, or strive against such conversational

gifts as those of Mrs. Kidder.

She could and would keep to anything except the point. That, whatever

its nature, she avoided as she would an indelicacy.

"Well, now, Mrs. Kidder," I began, "if you really want us to organize

this tour, don't you think we'd better discuss--"

"Of _course_ we want you to!" she broke in. "We all think it's just

awfully good of you to bother with us when you must have so many friends

who want you to take them--English people in your own set. By the way,

do you know the Duchess of Carborough?"

"I know very few duchesses or other Americans," I replied. Whereupon

Miss Kidder's imp laughed, though her mother remained grave, and even

looked mildly disappointed.

"That's a funny way of putting it," said Beechy. "One would think it was

quite an American habit, being a Duchess."

"So it is, isn't it?" I asked. "The only reason we needn't fear its

growing like the Yellow Peril is because there aren't enough dukes. I've

always thought the American nation the most favoured in the world.

Aren't all your girls brought up to expect to be duchesses, and your men

presidents?"

"_I_ wasn't," snapped Beechy. "If there was a duke anywhere around,

Mamma would take him, if she had to snatch him out of my mouth. What are

English girls brought up to expect?"

"Hope for, not expect," I corrected her. "Any leavings there are in the

way of marquesses or earls; or if none, a mere bishop or a C. B."

"What's a C. B.?" asked Mrs. Kidder anxiously.

"A Companion of the Bath."

"My goodness! Whose bath?"

"The Bath of Royalty. We say it with a capital B."

"My! How awkward for your King. And what was done about it when you had

only a Queen on the throne?"

"You must inquire of the chamberlains," I replied. "But about that trip

of ours. The--er--my car is in a garage not far away, and it can be

ready when--"

"Oh, I hope it's a _red_ car, with your coat of arms on it. I do so

admire red for an automobile. We could all fix ourselves up in red

cloaks and hats to match, and make ourselves look awfully swell--"

"Everybody'd call us 'The Crimson Ramblers,' or 'The Scarlet Runners,'

or something else horrid," tittered that precocious child Beechy.

"It isn't red, it's grey," Terry managed hastily to interpolate; which

settled one burning question, the first which had been settled or seemed

likely to be settled at our present rate of progress.

"If you are keen on starting--" I essayed again, hope triumphing over

experience.

"Yes, I'm just looking forward to that start," Mrs. Kidder caught me up.

"We _shall_ make a sensation. We're neighbours of yours, you know. We're

at the Cap Martin Hotel. Isn't it perfectly lovely there, with that big

garden, the woods and all? When we were coming to the Riviera, I told

the man at Cook's that we wanted to go to the grandest hotel there was,

where we could feel we were getting our money's worth; and he said all

the kings and princes, and queens and princesses went to the Cap Martin,

so--"

"We thought it might be good enough for us," capped Beechy.

"It's as full of royalties, as--as--"

"As a pack of cards," I suggested.

"And some of them have splendid automobiles. I've been envying them; and

only this morning I was saying to my little girl, what a lot of nice

things there are that women and children can't do, travelling

alone--automobiling for one. Then, when I came on that advertisement of

yours, I just _screamed_. It did seem as if the Hand of Providence must

have been pointing it out. And it was so funny your home being on the

Cap, too, within ten minutes' walk of our hotel. I'm sure it was

_meant_, aren't you?"

"Absolutely certain," I responded, with a glance at Terry, who was not

showing himself off to any advantage in this scene although he ought to

have been the leading actor. He did nothing but raise his eyebrows when

he thought that no one was looking, or tug at his moustache most

imprudently when somebody was. Or else he handed the cakes to Miss

Destrey, and forgot to offer them to her far more important relatives.

"I'm so sure of it," I went on, "that I think we had better arrange--"

"Yes, indeed. Of course your ch--Mr. Barrymore (or did I hear you say

Terrymore?) is a very experienced driver? We've never been in an

automobile yet, any of us, and I'm afraid, though it will be perfectly

lovely as soon as we're used to it, that we may be a little scary at

first. So it would be nice to know for sure that the driver understood

how to act in any emergency. I should _hate_ to be killed in an

automobile. It would be such--such an _untidy_ death to die, judging

from what you read in the papers sometimes."

"I should prefer it, myself," I said, "but that's a matter of taste, and

you may trust Terry--Mr. Barrymore. What he doesn't know about a

motor-car and its inner and outer workings isn't worth knowing. So when

we go--"

"Aunt K--I mean Kittie, don't you think we ought to go home to the

hotel?" asked Miss Destrey, who had scarcely spoken until now, except to

answer a question or two of Terry's, whom she apparently chose to

consider in the Martyr's Boat, with herself. "We've been here for

_hours_, and it's getting dark."

"Why, so it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, rising hurriedly. "I'm quite

ashamed of myself for staying so long. What will you think of us? But we

had such a lot of things to arrange, hadn't we?"

We had had; and we had them still. But that was a detail.

"We _must_ go," she went on. "Well, we've decided nearly everything"

(this was news to me). "But there are one or two things yet we'll have

to talk over, I suppose."

"Quite so," said I.

"Could you and Mr. Terrymore come and dine with us to-night? Then we can

fix _everything_ up."

"Speaking for myself, I'm afraid I can't, thanks very much," Terry said,

hastily.

"What about you, Sir Ralph? I may call you Sir Ralph, may I not?"

"Please. It's my name."

"Yes, I know it. But it sounds so familiar, from a stranger. I was

wondering if one ought to say 'Sir Ralph Moray,' till one had been

acquainted a little longer. Well, anyway, if you could dine with us,

without your friend--"

I also thanked her and said that matters would arrange themselves more

easily if Barrymore and I were together.

"Then can you both lunch with us to-morrow at one o'clock?"

Quickly, before Terry could find time to object if he meditated doing

so, I accepted with enthusiasm.

Farewells were exchanged, and we had walked to the gate with the

ladies--I heading the procession with Mrs. Kidder, Terry bringing up the

rear with the two girls--when my companion stopped suddenly. "Oh,

there's just one thing I ought to mention before you come to see us at

the hotel," she said, with a little catch of the breath. Evidently she

was embarrassed. "I introduced myself to you as Mrs. Kidder, because I'm

used to that name, and it comes more natural. I keep forgetting always,

but--but perhaps you'd better ask at the hotel for the Countess Dalmar.

I guess you're rather surprised, though you're too polite to say so, my

being an American and having that title."

"Not at all," I assured her. "So many charming Americans marry titled

foreigners, that one is almost more surprised--"

"But I haven't married a foreigner. Didn't I tell you that I'm a widow?

No, the only husband I ever had was Simon P. Kidder. But--but I've

bought an estate, and the title goes with it, so it would seem like a

kind of waste of money not to use it, you see."

"It's the estate that goes with the title, for you, Mamma," said Beechy

(she invariably pronounces her parent "Momma"). "You know you just love

being a Countess. You're happier than I ever was with a new doll that

opened and shut its eyes."

"Don't be silly, Beechy. Little girls should be seen and not heard. As I

was saying, I thought it better to use the title. That was the advice of

Prince Dalmar-Kalm, of whom I've bought this estate in some part of

Austria, or I think, Dalmatia--I'm not quite sure about the exact

situation yet, as it's all so recent. But to get used to bearing the

title, it seemed best to begin right away, so I registered as the

Countess Dalmar when we came to the Cap Martin Hotel a week ago."

"Quite sensible, Countess," I said without looking at

Beechy-of-the-Attendant-Imps. "I know Prince Dalmar-Kalm well by

reputation, though I've never happened to meet him. He's a very familiar

figure on the Riviera." (I might have added, "especially in the Casino

at Monte Carlo," but I refrained, as I had not yet learned the

Countess's opinion of gambling as an occupation.) "Did you meet him here

for the first time?"

"No; I met him in Paris, where we stopped for a while after we crossed,

before we came here. I was so surprised when I saw him at our hotel the

very day after we arrived! It seemed such a coincidence, that our only

acquaintance over on this side should arrive at the same place when we

did."

"When is a coincidence not a coincidence?" pertly inquired Miss Beechy.

"Can you guess that conundrum, Cousin Maida?"

"You naughty girl!" exclaimed her mother.

"Well, you like me to be childish, don't you? And it's childish to be

naughty."

"Come, we'll go home at once," said the Countess, uneasily; and followed

by the tall girl and the little one, she tottered away, sweeping yards

of chiffon.

"I do hope she won't wear things like that when she's in--ahem!--_our_

motor-car," I remarked _sotto voce_, as Terry and I stood at the gate,

watching, if not speeding, our parting guests.

"I doubt very much if she'll ever be there," prophesied Terry, looking

handsome and thoroughly Celtic, wrapped in his panoply of gloom.

"Come away in, while I see if I can find you 'The harp that once through

Tara's halls,' to play your own funeral dirge on," said I. "You look as

if it would be the only thing to do you any good."

"It would certainly relieve my feelings," replied Terry, "but I could do

that just as well by punching your head, which would be simpler. Of all

the infernal--"

"Now don't be brutal!" I implored. "You were quite pleasant before the

ladies. Don't be a whited sepulchre the minute their backs are turned.

Think what I've gone through since I was alone with you last, you great

hulking animal."

"Animal yourself!" Terry had the ingratitude to retort. "What have _I_

gone through, I should like to ask?"

"I don't know what you've gone through, but I know how you behaved," I

returned, as we walked back to the magnolia tree. "Like a sulky barber's

block--I mean a barber's sulky block. No, I--but it doesn't signify.

Hullo, there's the universal provider, carrying off the tray. Félicité,

_mon ange_, say how you summoned that tea and those cakes and cream from

the vasty deep?"

"What Monsieur is pleased to mean, I know not," my fourteen-stone angel

replied. "I visited with haste a friend of mine at the hotel, and I came

back with the things--that is all. It was an inspiration," and she

sailed away, her head in the air.

Terry and I went into the house, for the sun had left the high-walled

garden, and besides, the talk we were going to have was more suitable to

that practical region, my smoking-room-study-den, than to the romantic

shade of a magnolia tree.

We unpocketed our pipes, and smoked for several minutes before we spoke.

I vowed that Terry should begin; but as he went on puffing until I had

counted sixty-nine slowly, I thought it simpler to unvow the vow before

it had had time to harden.

"A penny for your thoughts, Paddy," was the sum I offered with engaging

lightness. "Which is generous of me, as I know them already. You are

thinking of Her."

Teddy forgot to misunderstand, which was a bad sign.

"If it weren't for Her, I'd have got out of the scrape at any price,"

said he, bold as brass. "But I'm sorry for that beautiful creature. She

must lead a beastly life, between a silly, overdressed woman and a pert

minx. Poor child, she's evidently as hard up as I am, or she wouldn't

stand it. She's miserable with them, I could see."

"So you consented to fall into my web, rather than leave her to their

mercy."

"Not exactly that, but--well, I can't explain it. The die's

cast, anyhow. I'm pledged to join the menagerie. But look here, Ralph,

do you understand what you've let me in for?"

"For the society of three charming Americans, two of whom are no doubt

worth their weight in gold."

"It's precisely their weight that's on my mind at this moment. You may

know one or two little things, my dear boy, but among them motoring is

not, otherwise when you were putting that mad advertisement into your

pink rag, you would have stopped to reflect that a twelve-horse power

car is not expected to carry five grown persons up airy mountains and

down rushy glens. Europe isn't perfectly flat, remember."

"Only four of us are grown up. Beechy's an Infant Phenomenon."

"Infant be hanged. She's sixteen if she's a day."

"Her mother ought to know."

"She doesn't want any one else to know. Anyway, I'm big enough to make

up the difference. And besides, my car's not a new one. I paid a

thumping price for her, but that was two years ago. There have been

improvements in the make since."

"Do you mean to tell me that car of yours can't carry five people half

across the world if necessary?"

"She can, but not at an exciting speed; and Americans want excitement.

Not only that, but you saw for yourself that they expect a handsome car

of the latest make, shining with brass and varnish. Amateurs always do.

What will they say when my world-worn old veteran bursts, or rather

bumbles, into view?"

I felt slightly crestfallen, for the first time. When one is an editor,

one doesn't like to think one has been caught napping. "You said you

ought to get two hundred pounds for your Panhard, if you sold it," I

reminded him. "That's a good deal of money. Naturally I thought the

motor must be a fairly decent one, to command that price after several

seasons' wear and tear."

Terry fired up instantly, as I had hoped he would; for his car is the

immediate jewel of his soul. "Decent!" he echoed. "I should rather

think she is. But just as there's a limit to your intelligence, so is

there a limit to her power, and I don't want it to come to that.

However, the thing's gone too far for me to draw back. It must depend

upon the ladies. If they don't back out when they see my car, I won't."

"To all intents and purposes it's my car now," said I. "You made her

over to me before witnesses, and I think I shall have her smartened up

with a bit of red paint and a crest."

"If you try on anything like that, you can drive her yourself, for I

won't. I like her old grey dress. I wouldn't feel at home with her in

any other. And she sha'n't be trimmed with crests to make an American

holiday. She goes as she is, or not at all, my boy."

"You are the hardest chap to do anything for I ever saw," I groaned,

with the justifiable annoyance of a martyr who has failed to convert a

pagan hero. "As if you hadn't made things difficult enough already by

'Mistering' yourself. At any moment you may be found out--though, on

second thoughts, it won't matter a rap if you are. If you're a mere

Mister, you are often obliged to appear before an unsympathetic police

magistrate for pretending to be a Lord. But I never heard of a Lord's

falling foul of the law for pretending to be a Mister."

"If you behave yourself, there isn't much danger of my being found out

by any of the people most concerned, during a few weeks' motoring on the

Continent; but it's to be hoped they won't select England, Scotland, or

Ireland for their tour."

"We can tell them that conditions are less favourable for motoring at

home--which is quite true, judging from the complaints I hear from

motor-men."

"But look here; you let me in for this. What I did was on the spur of

the moment, and in self-defence. I didn't dream then that I should be,

first cornered by you, then led on by circumstances into engaging as

chauffeur, to drive my own car on such a wild-goose chase."

"It's a wild goose that will lay golden eggs. Fifteen guineas a day, my

son; that's the size of the egg which that beneficent bird will drop

into your palm every twenty-four hours. Deduct the ladies' hotel

expenses--say three guineas a day; expenses for yourself and car we'll

call two guineas more (of course I pay my own way), that leaves you as

profit ten guineas daily; seventy guineas a week, or at the rate of

three thousand five hundred guineas per annum. Before you'd spent your

little patrimony, and been refused an--er--fratrimony, you weren't half

as well off as that. You might do worse than pass your whole life as a

Personal Conductor on those terms. And instead of thanking the wise

friend who has caught this goose for you, and is willing to leave his

own peaceful duck for your sake, with no remuneration, you abuse him."

"My dear fellow, I'm not exactly abusing you, for I know you meant well.

But you've swept me off my feet, and I'm not at home yet in mid air."

"You can lie on your back and roll in gold in the intervals of driving

the car. I promise not to give you away. Still, it's a pity you wouldn't

consent to trading a little on your title, which Heaven must have given

you for some good purpose. As it is, you've made my tuppenny-ha'penny

baronetcy the only bait, and that's no catch at all for an American

millionairess, fishing for something big in Aristocracy Pond. Why, when

that Prince of hers discovers what is doing, he will persuade the fair

Countess Dalmar that she's paying a high price for a Nobody--a

Nobody-at-All."

"What makes you think he doesn't know already, as he evidently followed

the party here, and must be constantly dangling about?"

"My detective instinct, which two seasons of pink journalism has

developed. Mrs. Kidder saw the advertisement this morning, and was

caught by it. May Sherlock Holmes cut me in the street if Prince

Dalmar-Kalm hasn't been away for the day, doubtless at Monte Carlo where

he has lost most of his own money, and will send the Countess's to find

it, if she gives him the chance."

"I never saw the fellow, or heard of him, so far as I can remember,"

said Terry thoughtfully. "What's he like? Middle-aged, stout?"

"He looks thirty, so he is probably forty; for if you look your age, you

are probably ten years past it--though that sounds a bit more Irish than

Scotch, eh? And he's far from being stout. From a woman's point of view,

I should say he might be very attractive. Tall; thin; melancholy;

enormous eyes; moustache waxed; scar on forehead; successful effect of

dashing soldier, but not much under the effect, I should say, except

inordinate self-esteem, and a masterly selfishness which would take what

it wanted at almost any cost to others. There's a portrait of Prince

Dalmar-Kalm for you."

"Evidently not the sort of man who ought to be allowed to hang about

young girls."

"Young girls with money. Don't worry about the vestal virgin. He won't

have time in this game to bother with poor relations, no matter how

pretty they may happen to be."

Terry still looked thoughtful. "Well, if we are going in for this queer

business, we'd better get off as soon as possible," said he.

I smiled in my sleeve. "St. George in a stew to get the Princess out of

the dragon's claws," I thought; but I refrained from speaking the

thought aloud. Whatever the motive, the wish was to be encouraged. The

sooner the wild goose laid the first golden egg the better. Fortunately

for my private interests, the season was waning and the coming week

would see the setting of my _Riviera Sun_ until next November. I could

therefore get away, leaving what remained of the work to be done by my

"sub"; and I determined that, Prince or no Prince, luncheon to-morrow

should not pass without a business arrangement being completed between

the parties.

III

A CHAPTER OF REVENGES

Mrs. Kidder, alias the Countess Dalmar, either had a fondness for lavish

hospitality or else she considered us exceptionally distinguished

guests. Our feast was not laid in a private dining-room (what is the

good of having distinguished guests if nobody is to know you've got

them?); nevertheless, it was a feast. The small round table, close to

one of the huge windows of the restaurant, was a condensed flower-show.

Our plates and glasses (there were many of the latter) peeped at us from

a bower of roses, and bosky dells of greenery. The Countess and the

Infant were dressed as for a royal garden party, and Terry and I would

have felt like moulting sparrows had not Miss Destrey's plain white

cotton kept us in countenance.

Mrs. Kidder had evidently not been comfortably certain whether we ought

not to march into the restaurant arm in arm, but the penniless goddess

(who had perhaps been brought to Europe as a subtle combination of

etiquette-mistress and ladies'-maid) cut the Gordian knot with a quick

glance, to our intense relief; and we filed in anyhow, places being

indicated to Terry and me on either hand of our hostess.

A painted satin menu, with a list of dishes as long as Terry's tailor's

bills, lay beside each plate. We were to be provided with all the

luxuries which were not in season; those which were would have been far

too common for an American millionairess, such as I began to be more and

more convinced that our hostess was. It was the kind of luncheon which

calls for rare and varied wines, just as certain poetical recitations

call for a musical accompaniment; therefore the Countess's first words

on sitting down at the table came as a shock.

"Now, Sir Ralph," said she, "you must just order any kind of wine you

and Mr. Ter--Barrymore like. Mr. Kidder never would have alcohol in the

house, except for sickness, and we three drink only water, so I don't

know anything about it; but I want that you gentlemen should suit your

own taste. Do make the waiter bring you something _real_ nice."

My sparkling visions of Steinberger Cabinet, Cos d'Estournel, or an

"Extra Sec" of '92, burst like a rainbow bubble. Here was one of life's

little tragedies.

Neither Terry nor I are addicted to looking too lovingly on wine when it

is red, or even pale golden; still, at this moment I had a sharp pang of

sympathy for Tantalus. To be sure, that hint as to "something real nice"

grudged no expense; but I must have been blest with more cool,

unadulterated "cheek" than two seasons of journalism had given me, to

order anything appropriate while our hostess drowned her generous

impulses in iced water.

With a wooden expression of countenance, I asked Terry what he would

have.

"Water, thanks," he replied airily, and if, instead of gazing at the

ceiling with elaborate interest, he had allowed his eye to meet mine at

that instant, a giggle might have burst over that luncheon-table, out of

a clear sky. Perforce, I felt obliged to follow his lead, for only a

guzzling brute could have bibbed alone, surrounded by four teetotallers;

but, deprived of even an innocent glass of Riviera beer, my soul

thirsted for a revenge which could not be quenched with iced water; and

I took it without waiting for repentance to set in.

"You see, Barrymore is a chauffeur," I carefully explained "and it's _en

regle_ for him, even though an amateur, to drink nothing stronger than

cold water. You will notice during our trip, Countess, how conscientious

he is in sticking to this pledge."

I felt that Terry's eye launched a dagger; but it was now my turn to be

interested in the ceiling.

"Oh, how _good_ of him!" exclaimed our hostess. "I do _admire_ that in

you, Mr. Tarrymore." (I couldn't help wondering incidentally whether the

Countess would have had such frequent lapses of memory regarding Terry's

name, if she knew that he was the brother of a marquis; but it may be

that I wronged her.) "We shall feel as safe as if we were in a house

when you are driving, now we know what kind of a man you are, shan't we,

girls?"

Poor Terry, irrevocably pledged to blue ribbonism for the term of his

natural chauffeurdom! I could have found it in my heart to pity him, had

not the iced water come jingling ironically round at that moment. Let it

then be upon his own head, with ice or without.

And this came of lunching with the widow of a Simon Pure Kidder! for I

had no longer the slightest doubt as to the middle name of the deceased.

With a brain almost cruelly clear and cold, I entered the lists with the

lady's conversational gifts, and after a spirited but brief tourney,

conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something

definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast

garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped

its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements

must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There

seemed to be so many people who had been attracted by that simple little

advertisement of mine, and really, I must be able to say that I and my

car were engaged for such and such a date--preferably a near one--or I

should have difficulty in evading requests for an intermediate trip with

others.

The butterfly wriggled no more. Indeed, it hastened to assure the

executioner that it was only too anxious to be comfortably pinned into

place.

"When could _you_ go, Sir Ralph?" the Countess asked.

"Day after to-morrow," I answered boldly. "Could you?"

She looked rather taken aback. "We--er--haven't motor things yet," she

demurred.

"You can get 'every requisite' (isn't that the word?) in the Nice or

Monte Carlo shops, if that's your only reason for delay."

Still the lady hesitated.

"Mamma's new crown isn't painted on all her baggage yet," said Beechy,

living up, with a wicked delight, to her _rôle_ of _enfante terrible_.

"It's being done, but it wasn't promised till the end of the week. Say,

Sir Ralph, don't you think she's mean not to give me even so much as

_half_ a crown?"

What I really thought was, that she deserved a slap; but Terry spared

the Countess a blush and me the brain fag of a repartee conciliatory

alike to parent and child.

"I think we ought to warn you," he said, "that the car hasn't precisely

the carrying capacity of a luggage van. Perhaps when you find that

there's no room for Paris frocks and hats, you'll repent your bargain."

"Can't we take a small trunk and a satchel apiece?" asked the Countess.

"I don't see how we could do with less."

"I'm afraid you'll have to, if you go in--er--my friend's car," Terry

went on ruthlessly. "A small box between the three of you, and a

good-sized dressing-bag each, is all that the car can possibly manage,

though, of course Moray and I will reduce our luggage to the minimum

amount."

Mrs. Kidder looked grave, and at this instant, just as I felt that

Terry's future was wavering in the balance, outweighed probably by a

bonnet-box, there was a slight stir in the restaurant, behind our backs.

Involuntarily I turned my head, and saw Prince Dalmar-Kalm hurrying

towards us, his very moustache a thundercloud. He could not have

appeared at a less convenient time for us.

I was sure that he had not been consulted in regard to the automobile

trip; that perhaps even now he was in ignorance of the plan; and that,

when he came to hear of it as he must within the next five minutes, he

would certainly try (as Beechy would have put it) to snatch the American

ladies out of our mouths. It was like Terry's luck, I said to myself,

that this evil genius should arrive at the moment when Mrs. Kidder had

been mercilessly deprived of her wardrobe by a mere chauffeur. Terry had

stupidly given her an opening if she chose to take it, by suggesting

that she might "repent her bargain," and I was sure it wouldn't be

Dalmar-Kalm's fault if she didn't take it.

A second later he had reached our table, was bending low over Mrs.

Kidder's hand, smiling with engaging wickedness at Beechy, and sending a

dark look of melancholy yearning to catch Miss Destrey's sympathies.

"Why, Prince," the Countess exclaimed in a loud tone, calculated to

reach the ears of any neighbouring royalties, and let them see that she

was as good as they were. "Why, Prince, if you're not always surprising

people! I thought you were staying another day with the Duke of Messina,

in Monte Carlo."

"Told you so!" my eyebrows--such as they are--telegraphed to Terry. "He

_has_ been away; only just back; pantomime demon act."

"I found myself homesick for Cap Martin," returned the Prince, with an

emphasis and a sweeping glance which made a present of the compliment to

the woman, the girl, and the child.

"Humph," I sneered into the iced water; "lost all he'd got with him, and

the money-lenders turned crusty; that's when the homesickness came on."

"Well, now you're here, do sit down and have lunch with us," said Mrs.

Kidder, "unless"--archly--"your homesickness has destroyed your

appetite."

"If it had, the pleasure of seeing you again would restore it;" and once

more the Austrian's gaze assured each one of the three that she alone

was the "you" referred to.

A nod and a gesture whisked a couple of attentive waiters to the table,

and in the twinkling of an eye--even an American eye--a place was laid

for the Prince, with duplicates of all our abortive wine glasses.

"Aha, my fine fellow, _you_ are no friend of cold water," I said to

myself in savage glee, as I acknowledged with a bow Mrs. Kidder's

elaborate introduction. "You will suffer even more than we have

suffered." But I reckoned without a full knowledge of the princely

character.

History repeated itself with an invitation to the new guest to choose

what he liked from the wine card. I looked for a courteous refusal,

accompanied by some such gallant speech as, that he would drink to the

ladies only with his eyes; but nothing of the kind happened. He searched

the list for a moment with the absorption of a connoisseur, then

unblushingly ordered a bottle of Romanée Conti, which wine, he

carelessly announced, he preferred to champagne, as being "less

obvious." The price, however, would be pretty obvious on Mrs. Kidder's

bill, I reflected; seventy francs a bottle, if it were a penny. But did

this coming event cast a shadow on the Prince's contentment? On the

contrary, it probably spangled its fabric with sequins. He sniffed the

wine as if it had been an American Beauty rose, and quaffed it

ecstatically, while Terry and I gulped down our iced water and our

indignation.

"You are just in time, Prince," said Mrs. Kidder, "to advise us about

our journey. Oh, I forgot, you don't know anything about it yet. But we

are going a tour in Sir Ralph Moray's automobile. Won't it be fun?"

"Indeed?" the Prince ejaculated hastily; and I had the satisfaction of

knowing that one swallow of the Romanée Conti was spoiled for him. "No;

I had not heard. I did not know that Sir Ralph Moray was one of your

friends. Has not this been suddenly arranged?"

"It was only _decided_ yesterday," replied the Countess; and it was

revealed to me that the plump lady was not without feminine guile.

"What is your car?" inquired the Prince, turning abruptly to me.

"A Panhard," I answered, with a gaze as mild as milk. I knew that my

answer would disappoint him, as he could pick no flaws in the make of

the machine.

"What horse-power?" he continued his catechism.

"Something under twenty," I conservatively replied.

"Twelve," corrected Terry, with a brutal bluntness unworthy of a Celt.

He can be very irritating sometimes; but at this moment he was looking

so extremely handsome and devil-may-care, that my desire to punch his

head dissolved as I glared at him. Could any woman in her senses throw

over even a titleless Terry and twelve horses worth of motor for a hat

box or two and an Austrian Prince?

"A twelve-horse-power car, and you propose to take with you on tour

three ladies, their maid, and all their luggage?" demanded Dalmar-Kalm

in his too excellent English. "But it is not possible."

I felt suddenly as if Terry and I were little snub-nosed boys,

trafficking with a go-cart.

"They won't need their maid, Prince," said Miss Destrey. "I know how to

do Aunt Kathryn's hair; and the dear Sisters have taught me how to mend

beautifully."

This was the first time she had opened her lips during luncheon, except

to eat with an almost nun-like abstemiousness; and now she broke silence

to rescue a scheme which yesterday had excited her active disapproval.

The girl, always interesting because of her unusual type of beauty,

gained a new value in my eyes. She excited my curiosity, although her

words were a practical revelation of her place in the trio. Why did she

break a lance in our defence? and had she been torn from a convent to

serve her rich relatives, that she should mention the "Sisters" in that

familiar and tender tone? Had her beautiful white sails veered with a

new wind, and did she _want_ to go with us, after all? Did she wish to

tell the Prince in a sentence, how poor she really was? These were a few

of the hundred and one questions which the Fair Maid of Destrey's

charming and somewhat baffling personality set going in my mind by a

word or two.

I thought that the Prince's face fell, but Mrs. Kidder's contribution to

the defence distracted my attention.

"We don't expect to take _all_ our luggage," she said. "I suppose some

things could be sent by rail from place to place to meet us, couldn't

they?"

"Of course," I assured her, before Dalmar-Kalm could enlarge upon the

uncertainties of such an arrangement. "That's what is always done. And

your maid could travel by rail too."

"She is a Parisienne," exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, "and she's always saying

she wouldn't leave France for twice the wages I pay."

"Try her with three times," suggested Beechy. But Miss Destrey was

speaking again. "As I said, it doesn't matter about Agnes. Aunt Kathryn

and Beechy shan't miss her; and she never does anything for me."

"What a pity," complained the Prince, "that my automobile is at the

moment laid up for repairs. Otherwise I should have been only too

delighted to take you three ladies to the world's end, if you had the

wish. _It_ is not 'something less than twenty,' as Sir Ralph Moray

describes his twelve-horse-power car, but is something _more_ than

twenty, with a magnificently roomy Roi de Belge tonneau and

accommodation for any amount of luggage on the roof. By the way, yours

has at least a cover, I make no doubt, Sir Ralph?"

"No," I was obliged to admit, my mouth somewhat dry--owing perhaps to

the iced water.

"No cover? How, then, do you propose to protect these ladies from the

rain?" This with virtuous indignation flashing from his fierce eyes, and

a gesture which defended three helpless feminine things from the

unscrupulous machinations of a pair of villains.

My ignorance of motor lore bereft me of a weapon with which to parry the

attack, but Terry whipped out his sword at last.

"The ladies will be protected by their motor coats and our rugs. I'm

sure they're too plucky to sacrifice the best pleasures of motoring to a

little personal comfort when it may happen to rain," said he. "A roof

gives no protection against rain except with curtains, and even when

without them it curtails the view."

"Ah, it is cruel that I cannot get my car for you from Paris," sighed

the Prince. "Perhaps, Countess, if you would wait a little time--a week

or ten days, I might--"

"But we're going day after to-morrow, aren't we, Kittie?" quickly broke

in Miss Destrey.

"I suppose so," replied Mrs. Kidder, who invariably frowned when

addressed as "Cousin Kathryn," and brightened faintly if spontaneously

Kittied. "We've been here more than a week, and seen all the Nice and

Monte Carlo sights, thanks to the Prince. There's nothing to keep us,

although it will be about all we can do to get off so soon."

"Why be hurried, Countess?" with a shrug of the shoulder half-turned

from me.

"Well, I don't know." Her eyes wandered to mine. "But it suits Sir Ralph

to leave then. I guess we can manage it."

"Where will you go?" inquired Dalmar-Kalm. "I might be able to join you

somewhere _en route_."

"Well, that's one of the things we haven't quite settled yet," replied

Mrs. Kidder. "Almost anywhere will suit me. We can just potter around.

It's the automobiling we want. You know, this is our first time in

Europe, and so long as we're in pretty places, it's much the same to

us."

"Speak for yourself, Mamma," said Beechy. "Maida and I want to see the

Lake of Como, where Claude Melnotte had his palace."

"Oh, my, yes! In 'the Lady of Lyons.' I do think that's a perfectly

sweet play. Could we go there, Sir Ralph?"

"I must consult my chauffeur," said I, cautiously. "He knows more about

geography than I do. He ought to; he spends enough money on road-maps to

keep a wife. Eh, Terry?"

"There are two ways of driving to the lakes from here," he said, with a

confidence which pleased me. "One can go coasting along the Italian

Riviera to Genoa, and so direct to Milan; or one can go through the

Roya Valley, either by Turin, or a short cut which brings one eventually

to Milan."

"Milan!" exclaimed Miss Destrey, with a rapt look. "Why, that's not very

far from Verona, is it? And if it's not far from Verona, it can't be so

far from Venice. Oh, Beechy, think of seeing Venice!"

"It would be easy to go there," Terry said, showing too much eagerness

to fall in with a whim of the poor relation's; at least such was my

opinion until, with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he added, "If we

went to Venice, Countess, it would be very easy to run on if you liked,

into Dalmatia and see the new estate which you told us you thought of

buying, before you actually made up your mind to have it."

It was all I could do to strangle a chuckle at birth. Good old Terry!

Even he was not above taking a neat revenge; and the Prince's face

showed _how_ neat it was. Could it be possible that the estate in

Dalmatia which carried with it a title, had any resemblance to Claude

Melnotte's in that "sweet" play, "The Lady of Lyons?" I could scarcely

believe that, much as I would have liked to; but it was clear he would

have preferred to have the American millionairess take the beauties of

her new possessions for granted.

"Oh, I have made up my mind already. I made it up before we arrived

here," said the Countess.

"She made it up in the train coming from Paris," corrected Beechy,

"because she had to decide what name to register, and whether she'd have

the crown put on her handkerchiefs and her baggage. But she had to cable

to our lawyer in Denver before she could get money enough to pay what

the Prince wanted in advance, and the answer only came back this

morning."

"And what does the lawyer say?" asked the Prince, flushing, and with a

strained playfulness contradicted by the eager light in his eyes.

"Just guess," said Beechy, all her imps in high glee.

"Lawyers are such dry-as-dust persons," remarked His Highness, hastily

lifting his glass to toss off the last of the Romanée Conti. "If he is a

wise man who studies his client's interests, he could not advise Madame

against taking a step by which she ascends to a height so advantageous,

but--"

"Oh, he said yes," cried Mrs. Kidder, clinging to her Countesshood.

"And he put after it, 'If you will be a fool,'" added Beechy. "But he'll

have to pay for that part of the cable himself."

"He is my late husband's cousin," explained Mrs. Kidder, "and he takes

liberties sometimes, as he thinks Simon would not have approved of

everything I do. But you needn't tell _everything_, Beechy."

"Let's talk about Venice," said Miss Destrey with a lovely smile, which

seemed all the more admirable as she had given us so few. "I have always

longed to see Venice."

"But you didn't want to come abroad, you can't say you did," remarked

Beechy the irrepressible, resenting her cousin's interference, as a

naughty boy resents being torn from the cat to whose tail he has been

tying a tin can. "And I know _why_ you didn't!" She too had a taste for

revenge!

Miss Destrey blushed--I wondered why; and so, no doubt, did Terry

wonder. (Had she by chance been sent abroad to forget an unfortunate

attachment?)

"You wanted to stay with the Sisters," Beechy took advantage of the

other's embarrassed silence to go on. "And you hardly enjoyed Paris at

all, although everybody turned to look after you in the streets."

"Well, now that I have come, I should enjoy seeing the places I've cared

most to read about in history or poetry," said Miss Destrey quickly,

"and Venice is one of them."

"Maida has lived more in books than she has in real life," remarked Miss

Beechy with scorn. "I know a lot more about the world than she does,

although I am only--only--"

"Thirteen," finished the Countess. "Beechy darling, would you like to

have some more of those _marrons glacés_? They aren't good for you, but

just this once you may, if you want to. And oh, Sir Ralph, I should love

to see my new estate. It's a very old estate really, you know, though

new to me; so old that the castle is almost a ruin; but if I saw it and

took a great fancy to the place, I might have it restored and made

perfectly elegant, to live in sometimes, mightn't I? Just where _is_

Schloss (she pronounced it 'Slosh') what-you-may-call-it? I never _can_

say it properly?"

"Schloss Hrvoya is very far down in Dalmatia--almost as far east as

Montenegro," replied the Prince. "The roads are extremely bad, too. I do

not think they would be feasible for an automobile, especially for Sir

Ralph Moray's little twelve-horse-power car carrying five persons."

"I differ from you there, Prince." Terry argued, looking obstinate. "I

have never driven in Dalmatia, although I've been to Fiume and Abbazzia;

but I have a friend who went with his car, and he had no adventures

which ladies would not have enjoyed. Our principal difficulty would be

about petrol; but we could carry a lot, and have supplies sent to us

along the route. I'll engage to manage that--and the car."

"Then it's settled that we go," exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, clapping two

dimpled hands covered with rings. "What a wonderful trip it will be."

I could see that the Prince would have liked to call Terry out, but he

was too wise to dispute the question further; and a dawning plan of some

kind was slowly lightening his clouded eye.

My wish was granted at last; something was settled. And later, strolling

on the terrace, I contrived to put all that was left upon a business

basis.

Never had man a better friend than Terence Barrymore has in me; and my

whole attention on the way home was given to making him acknowledge it.

IV

A CHAPTER OF HUMILIATIONS

After all, we did not start on the day after to-morrow. Our luncheon had

been on Tuesday. On Wednesday a note came, sent by hand from Mrs.

Kidder, to say that she could not possibly be ready until Friday, and

that as Friday was an unlucky day to begin any enterprise, we had better

put off starting until Saturday. But I must not "think her changeable,

as she really had a very good reason"; and she was mine "Cordially,

Kathryn Stanley Kidder-Dalmar."

Having first stated that she could not be ready, and then added her

reason was good, I naturally imagined there was more in the delay than

met the eye. My fancy showed me the hand of Prince Dalmar-Kalm, and I

firmly believed that each finger of that hand to say nothing of the

thumb, was busily working against us.

All Thursday and Friday I expected at any moment to receive an

intimation that, owing to unforseen circumstances (which might not be

explained) the Countess and her party were unable to carry out the

arrangement they had entered into with us. But Thursday passed, and

nothing happened. Friday wore on towards evening, and the constant

strain upon my nerves had made me irritable. Terry, who was calmly

getting ready for the start as if there were no cause for uncertainty,

chaffed me on my state of mind, and I rounded upon him viciously, for

was not all my scheming for his sake?

I was in the act of pointing out several of his most prominent defects,

and shedding cigarette ashes into his suit-case as he packed, when

Félicité appeared with a letter.

"It's from her!" I gasped. "And--she's got her coronet. It's on the

envelope, as large as life."

"Which means that she's ready," said the future chauffeur, examining a

suit of overalls.

"Don't be so cocksure," said I, opening the letter. "Hum--ha--well, yes,

it does seem to be all right, if you can ever judge a woman's intentions

by what she says. She wants to know whether the arrangement stands, that

we're to call for them at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and whether

we're to go rain or shine. I'll scratch off a line in answer, and say

yes--yes--yes, to everything."

I did so with a trembling hand, and then gave myself up to the weakness

of reaction. Upon Félicité fell the task of doing my packing, which

consisted in cramming a suit of flannels, my evening things, and all the

linen it would hold without bursting asunder, into a large, fitted

suit-case. Terry had a suit-case too, five times better than mine

(Irishmen in debt always do have things superior to those of every one

else); we had motor-coats, and enough guide-books and road-maps to stock

a small library; and when these were collected we were ready for the

Great Adventure.

When Terry visits me at the Châlet des Pins, he keeps his car at a

garage in Mentone. His habit has been to put up his chauffeur close by

this garage, and telephone when he wants to use the car; but the

chauffeur was paid off and sent away ten days ago, at about the time

when Terry decided that the automobile must be sold. He had not been in

spirits for a drive since, until the fateful day of the advertisement,

but immediately after our luncheon with the Countess he had walked down

to the garage and stayed until dinner-time. What he had been doing there

he did not deign to state; but I had a dim idea that when you went to

call on a motor-car in its den, you spent hours on your back bolting

nuts, or accelerating silencers, or putting the crank head (and

incidentally your own) into an oil bath; and I supposed that Terry had

been doing these things. When he returned on Wednesday, Thursday, and

Friday, spending several hours on each occasion, I went on supposing the

same; but when at nine o'clock on Saturday morning he drove up to the

garden gate after another trip to Mentone, I had a surprise.

Terry had almost bitten off my head when I had innocently proposed to

have his car smartened up to suit the taste of the Countess; but,

without saying a word to me, he had been at work improving its

appearance.

"She" (as he invariably calls his beloved vehicle) was dressed in grey

as before, but it was fresh, glossy grey, still smelling of turpentine.

The tyres were new, and white, and a pair of spare ones were tied onto

the motor's bonnet, which looked quite jaunty now in its clean

lead-coloured paint.

The shabby cushions of the driver's seat and tonneau had been re-covered

also with grey, and wherever a bit of brass was visible it glittered

like pure gold.

At the sound of the Panhard's sob at the gate, Félicité and I hurried

down the path, armed with the two coats and suit-cases, there to be

surprised by the rejuvenated car, and dumbfounded by a transformed

Terry.

"Mon Dieu, comme il est beau, comme ça," cried my domestic miracle

worker, lost in admiration of a tall, slim, yet athletic figure, clad

from head to foot in black leather. "Mais--mais ce n'est pas comme il

faut pour un Milord."

"Why, Terry," exclaimed I, "I never thought--I never expected--I'm

hanged if you're not a real professional. It's awfully smart, and very

becoming--never saw you look better in your life. But it's--er--a kind

of masquerade, you know. I'm not sure you ought to do it. If Innisfallen

saw you like that, he'd cross you out of his will."

"He's dead certain to have done that already. When I engaged as your

chauffeur I engaged as your chauffeur and I intend to look the part as

well as act it. I want this car to be as smart as it can, which

unfortunately isn't saying much, and towards that end I've been doing my

best these last three or four days. She isn't bad, is she?"

"From being positively plain, if not ugly, she has become almost a

beauty," I replied. "But I thought you were determined to preserve her

from the sin of vanity? Why this change of mind?"

"Well, I couldn't stand Dalmar-Kalm running her down," Terry confessed

rather sheepishly. "There was so little time, that half the work on her

I've done myself."

"That accounts, then, for your long and mysterious absences."

"Only partly. I've been working like a navvy, at a mechanic's shop,

fagging up a lot of things I knew how to do on principle, but had seldom

or never done with my own hands. I was always a lazy beggar, I'm afraid,

and it was better fun to smoke and watch my man Collet making or fitting

in a new part than to bother with it myself. This will be my first long

trip 'on my own,' you see, and I don't want to be a duffer, especially

as I myself proposed going down into Dalmatia, where we may get into no

end of scrapes."

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, gazing with a new respect at my leather-clad

friend and his car. "You've got some good stuff in you, Terry. I didn't

quite realize what a responsibility I was throwing on you, old chap,

when I named you as my chauffeur. Except for my drives with you, I

suppose I haven't been in a motor half a dozen times in my life, now I

come to think of it and it always seemed to me that, if a man knew how

to drive his own car, he must know how to do everything else that was

necessary."

"Very few do, even expert drivers, among amateurs. A man ought to be

able not only to take his car entirely to pieces and put it together

again, but to go into a mechanic's shop and make a new one. I don't say

that I can do that, but I can come a bit nearer to it than I could five

days ago. I don't think that the poor old car will be such a shock to

the ladies now, even after some of the fine ones they must have seen, do

you?"

He was so ingenuously proud of his achievements, had toiled so

hard, and sacrificed so much of his personal vanity in providing his

employers with a suitable chauffeur, that I did not stint my

commendation of him and his car. Félicité, too, was prolific in

compliments. The duck, who had waddled out to the gate to see what was

doing, quacked flattery; the yellow cat mewed praise; and Terry, pleased

as Punch with everything and everybody, whistled as he stowed away our

suit-cases.

The moment of departure had come. With some emotion I bade farewell to

my family, which I should not see again until I returned to the Riviera

to open the autumn season with the first number of the _Sun_. Then one

last look at the little place which had become dear to me, and we were

off with a bound for the Cap Martin Hotel.

Terry, when in a frank and modest mood, had sometimes said to me that,

with all the virtues of strength, faithfulness, and getting-thereness,

his car was not to be called a fast car. Thirty miles an hour was its

speed at best, and this pace it seemed had been far surpassed by newer

cars of the same make, though of no higher power, since Terry's had been

built. This fact I took for granted, as I had heard it from Terry's own

lips more than once; but as we flew over the wooded road which divided

the Châlet des Pins from the Cap Martin Hotel, I would have sworn that

we were going at the rate of sixty miles per hour.

"Good Heavens!" I gasped. "Have you been doing anything to this car, to

make her faster than she was? Help! I can't breathe."

"Nonsense," said Terry, with soothing calm. "It's only because you

haven't motored for a long time that you imagine we're going fast. The

motor's working well, that's all. We're crawling along at a miserable

twenty miles an hour."

"Well, I'm glad that worms and other reptiles can't crawl at this pace,

anyhow, or life wouldn't be worth living for the rest of creation," I

retorted, cramming on my cap and wishing I had covered my tearful eyes

with the motor-goggles which lay in my pocket. "If our millionairesses

don't respect this pace, I'll eat my hat when I have time, or--"

But Terry was not destined to hear the end of that boast--which perhaps

was just as well for me in the end, as things were to turn out. We spun

down the avenue of pines, and in less than a lazy man's breathing space

were at the door of the Cap Martin Hotel.

Quite a crowd of smart-looking people was assembled there, and for one

fond second I dreamed that they were waiting to witness our arrival. But

that pleasant delusion died almost as soon as born. As the group divided

at our approach we saw that they had been collected round a large

motor-car--a motor-car so resplendent that beside it our poor

rejuvenated thing looked like a little, made-up, old Quaker lady.

In colour this hated rival was a rich, ripe scarlet, with cushions to

match in her luxurious tonneau. Her bonnet was like a helmet of gold for

the goddess Minerva, and wherever there was space, or chance, for

something to sparkle with jewelled effect, that something availed

itself, with brilliance, of the opportunity.

The long scarlet body of the creature was shaded with a canopy of

canvas, white as the breast of a gull, and finished daintily all round

with a curly fringe. The poles which held it were apparently of

glittering gold, and the railing designed to hold luggage on the top, if

not of the same precious metal, was as polished as the letters of Lord

Chesterfield to his long-suffering son.

One jealous glance was enough to paint this glowing picture upon our

retinas, and there it remained, like a sun-spot, even when a later one

was stamped upon it. Three figures in long, grey motor-coats, exactly

alike, and motor-caps, held on with shirred chiffon veils came forward,

two advancing more quickly than the third.

"How _do_ you do, Sir Ralph? Good morning, Mr. Barrymore," Mrs. Kidder

and Beechy were saying. "We're all ready," went on the former,

excitedly. "We've been admiring the Prince's car, which came last night.

Isn't it a perfect beauty? Just _look_ at the sweet poppy-colour, and

his crest in black and gold. I never saw anything so pretty, did you?"

"I like Sir Ralph's car," said Miss Destrey. "It's such a cool grey, and

even in wind or dust it will always look neat. We shall match it very

well with our grey coats and veils."

I could have kissed her; while as for Terry, standing cap in hand, he

looked grateful enough to have grovelled at our fair champion's feet.

Nevertheless, we could not help knowing in our hearts that no normal

girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and

that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation

to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals,

when His Highness himself appeared to give it a still sharper twist.

He had been standing at a short distance, talking with a small chauffeur

of a peculiarly solemn cast of countenance. Now he turned and joined the

ladies with a brisk step and an air of proprietorship.

The fact that he was wearing a long motor-coat, of a smart cut, and a

peaked cap which became him excellently, struck me as ominous. Had he

caught the birds--our birds--after all, at the last moment, and had they

been too cowardly to let us know?

"Oh, good morning, Sir Ralph," said he. "So that is the famous car. Mine

is a giant beside it, is it not? No doubt you and your friend are clever

men, but you will need all your cleverness to provide comfortable

accommodation for these ladies' luggage as well as themselves. I would

not mind betting you ten to one that you will fail to do it to their

satisfaction."

"I'll take the bet if the ladies don't mind," responded Terry promptly,

those lazy Irish eyes of his very bright and dark.

"What--a bet? Why, that will be real fun," laughed the Countess, showing

her dimples. "What is it to be?"

A slightly anxious expression hardened the lines of the Prince's face

when he found himself taken in earnest. "A thousand francs against a

hundred of yours shall it be, Monsieur? I don't wish to plunge my hand

into your pockets," said he, shrewdly making a virtue of his caution.

"As you like," Terry assented. "Now for the test. Your luggage has come

down, Countess?"

"Yes; here it all is," said Mrs. Kidder, guiltily indicating three stout

hotel porters who stood in the background heavily laden. "Dear me, it

_does_ look as if it was going to be a mighty tight squeeze, doesn't

it?"

In response to a gesture, the porters advanced in line, like the Three

Graces; and counting rapidly, I made out that their load consisted of

one good-sized "Innovation" cabin box, two enormous alligator-skin

dressing bags, one small bag, and two capacious hold-alls, umbrellas,

parasols, and a tea-basket.

I began to tremble for more than Terry's five pounds. I now saw all the

Prince's guile. He had somehow managed to produce his car, and had, no

doubt, used all his eloquence to persuade Mrs. Kidder that she would be

justified in changing her mind at the last moment. That he had failed

was owing either to her sense of honour or her liking for the

English-speaking races over foreigners, even princely ones. But refusing

to abandon hope, His Highness had pinned his last fluttering rag of

faith upon the chance that our car would fail to fulfil its contract.

With this chance, and this alone still to depend upon, he had probably

kept his melancholy chauffeur up all night, sponging and polishing. If

the Panhard refused to absorb the ladies' luggage, there would be his

radiant chariot waiting to console them in the bitter hour of their

disappointment.

As Terry stood measuring each piece of luggage with his eye, silently

apportioning it a place in the car, I felt as I had felt at "Monte"

when, at roulette, as many as three of my hard-won five franc pieces

might easily go "bang," like the sixpence of another canny Scot. Will it

be _rouge_; will it be _noir_?... I could never look; and I could not

look now.

Turning to Beechy, who stood at my shoulder eagerly watching, I flung

myself into conversation. "What are you laughing at?" I asked.

"At all of you," said the Infant. "But especially the Prince."

"Why especially the Prince?" I was growing interested.

"I should think you'd know."

"How could I know?"

"Because I guess you're pretty bright. Sometimes I look at you, and you

seem to be thinking the same things I am. I don't know whether that

makes me like you or hate you, but anyway it makes me give you credit

for good wit. I'm not exactly _stupid_."

"I've noticed that. But about the Prince?"

"Can't you guess how he got his automobile just in the nick of time?"

"Yes, I can guess; but maybe it wouldn't be right."

"And maybe it would. Let's see."

"Well, the Countess heard favourably from her lawyer in Denver on

Tuesday, and paid down something in advance for the Dalmatian estate."

"_And_ the title. Right first time. The 'something' was eight thousand

dollars."

"Phew!"

"That's just the word for it. When she's seen the place, she'll pay the

rest--eight thousand more. Quite a lot for those gold crowns on the

luggage; but we all have our dolls with eyes to open or shut, and poor

Mamma hasn't had any chance to play dolls till just lately. She's busy

now having heaps of fun, and I'm having a little, too, in my simple

childish way. Well, so long as we don't interfere with each other!...

The Prince sees that Mamma can afford to buy dolls, so he would like to

play with her, and me, and--"

"And he doesn't want Barrymore and me in the playroom."

"I _thought_ you were bright! It made him just sick to think of you two

walking off with us from under his nose. _There_ was his automobile in

Paris, and there was he _here_, perfectly useless, because I'm sure he'd

lent the auto to his uncle."

"To his uncle?" I echoed.

"Don't you say that in England, or Scotland, or wherever you come from?

'Put it up the Spout'--pawned it; and he couldn't move one way or the

other till he'd got Mamma's money. The minute that was in his pocket he

began to plan. The first thing he did was to tell Mamma that he had a

surprise for her, which he'd been getting ready for several days, and it

would be spoiled if we all went off with you and that awfully

good-looking chauffeur of yours on Thursday. He said he _must_ have till

Saturday morning, and Mamma was so curious to know what the mystery was,

and so afraid of hurting a real live Prince's feelings, that she was

finally persuaded to wait."

"Oh, that is the explanation of her letter to me."

"Yes. I suspected what was going on, but she didn't; having dimples

makes people so soft and good-natured. I don't _know_ what the Prince

did after she'd given her word to stay, but I guessed."

"He wired money to his chauffeur in Paris or somewhere, had the car got

out of the clutches of that relative you referred to, and brought on

here at top speed."

"But not its own speed. When it arrived here last night, it was just as

spick and span as it is now."

"Then it must have come by train."

"That's what I think. I bet the Prince was too much afraid some accident

might happen to it on the way, and upset all his plans, to trust to

having the thing driven down here by road."

"You must be careful not to let your brain develop too fast," I pleaded,

"or when you grow up, you--"

"That's such a long time off, I don't need to worry yet," Miss Kidder

remarked demurely. "Do you think I look more than my age?"

"No, but you _talk_ more," said I.

"How can you judge? What do you know about little girls like me?"

"I don't know anything about little girls like you, because all the

rest got broken; but if you'll teach me, I'll do my best to learn."

"The Prince is doing his best too, I guess. I wonder which will learn

faster?"

"That depends partly on you. But I should have thought all his time was

taken up with your mother."

"Oh my! no. He wants _her_ to think that. But you see, he's got more

time than anything else, so he has plenty to spare for me, and Maida

too. Do you know what he called us to a friend of his in this hotel? The

friend's wife told her maid, and she passed it on to our Agnes, who

repeated it to me because we were sending her away. 'Kid, Kidder,

Kiddest.' I'm Kiddest, of course; that's easy enough; but it would save

the Prince lots of trouble and brain-fag if he only knew which was

'Rich,' which 'Richer,' and which 'Richest.'"

"Heavens!" I ejaculated. "If you have got together all this mass of

worldly wisdom at thirteen, what will you have accumulated at twenty?"

"It all depends on when Mamma allows me to be twenty," retorted the

little wretch. And what lengths this indecently frank conversation might

have reached between us I dare not think, had not an exclamation from

Terry cut it short.

"What do you say to that, Countess, and Miss Destrey? Have I won the

bet?" he was demanding, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket,

as he stood to survey his work.

If I had not infinite belief in Terry's true Irish ingenuity, I would

have considered the day and the bet both lost before the test had been

essayed. But he had justified my faith, and there on the almost

obliterated lines of the motor-car, behold a place for everything, and

everything in its place.

On one step the "Innovation" cabin-box reared itself on end like a

dwarfish obelisk; a fat hold-all adorned each mud-guard, where it lay

like an underdone suet pudding; the two huge dressing-bags had been

pushed under the corner seats of the tonneau, which fortunately was of

generous dimensions, while the third and smallest one (no doubt Miss

Destrey's) was so placed that it could be used as a footstool, or pushed

to the front out of the way. Umbrellas and parasols stood upright in a

hanging-basket especially designed for them; books and maps had

disappeared into a box, which was also a shelf on the back of the

driver's seat, and the tea-basket had been lashed on top of this.

The Prince's voice responded to Terry's question with ribald mirth

before it could be answered by the ladies.

"Ha, ha, ha!" cried he, shouting with laughter at the appearance of the

car; and even my lips twitched, though I would have vowed it was St.

Vitus's dance if anyone had accused me of a smile. "Ha, ha, the

automobile looks like nothing so much as a market-woman going home with

the family provisions for a month. But will she ever _get_ home?" Here

he became spasmodic, and as he had made a present of his picturesque

smile to all the lookers-on as well as to those whom it most concerned,

a grin rippled over the faces of the various groups as a breeze ruffles

the surface of a pond.

If I could have done His Highness Prince Dalmar-Kalm a mischief at this

moment, without imperilling my whole future, I would have stuck at

nothing; but there is capital punishment in France, and, besides, there

were no weapons handy except the ladies' hatpins. Still, it was useless

denying it, the car looked, if not like a market-woman, at least like a

disreputable old tramp of the motor world, with its wreaths of luggage

looped on anyhow, as if it were a string of giant sausages; and I hated

the Prince not only for his impertinent pleasure in our plight, but for

the proud magnificence of his car, which gained new lustre in the

disgrace of ours.

"You have more, what do you call it in English--cheek, is it not?--than

most of your countrymen, to ask the ladies whether they can be satisfied

with _that_," he went on, between his mirthful explosions. "_Chère_

Countess, do not let your kind heart run away with you. Let me tell Sir

Ralph Moray that it is impossible for you to tour with him under such

conditions, which are surely not what you had a right to expect. If you

will go with me, _that_"--pointing a derisive finger at the

Panhard--"can follow with the luggage."

Mrs. Kidder shook her auburn head, though her dimples were obscured, and

a pinkness of complexion for which she had not paid betrayed the fact

that her _amour propre_ was writhing under this ordeal. Poor little

woman, I really pitied her, for even with my slight knowledge of her

character, I guessed that she had dreamed of the sensation the departure

_en automobile_ of a party so distinguished would create at the hotel.

She had confidingly judged the charms of the advertised car from those

of the advertisers, and this was her reward. Could we blame her if, in

the bitterness of mortification, she yielded to the allurement of that

glittering car which was our detractor's best argument? But she was

loyal on the rack.

"No," she said, "I never backed out of anything yet, and I'm not going

to now. Besides, we don't want to, do we, girls? Sir Ralph's automobile

is just as nice as it can be, and it's our fault, not his, or Mr.

Barrymore's, if we've got a little more luggage than we were told we

ought to take. I guess we'll get along all right as soon as we're used

to it, and we shall have _the_ time of our lives."

"Mamma, you're a brick, and I'm glad Papa married you," was Beechy's

pæan of praise.

"And I think the way our things are arranged looks really _graceful_,"

said Miss Destrey. "Mr. Barrymore has won that bet easily, hasn't he,

Kitty and Beechy?"

"Yes," came faintly from the Countess and cordially from the child. And

I whistled "Hail, the Conquering Hero" _sotto voce_, as Dalmar-Kalm,

with a smile like a dose of asafoetida, counted out the amount of his

lost wager.

"Well," he said, squaring his shoulders to make the best of a bad

bargain, "you are three brave ladies to trust yourselves in a machine

without room, speed, or power to cross the Alps."

"You can go to the Cathedral at Monaco and pray for us to Saint Joseph,

who, Agnes told me, looks after travellers," said Beechy. "But I do

think a more modern saint ought to be invented for motorists."

"I shall do better than that. I shall be your protecting saint. I shall

go with you as a surgeon attends a company of soldiers," returned the

Prince, with his air of _grand seigneur_. "That is, I shall keep as near

you as a twenty-horse-power car with a light load can possibly keep to a

twelve, with three times the load it's fitted to carry."

"You're not very complimentary to Mamma," glibly remarked the

Irrepressible.

"I fancy, in spite of our load," said Terry with undaunted cheerfulness,

"we shall find room to stow away a coil of rope which may prove useful

for towing the Prince's car over some of those Alps he seems to think so

formidable, in case he decides to--er--follow us. If I'm not mistaken,

Prince, your motor is a Festa, made in Vienna, isn't it?"

"Certainly; the most successful in Austria. And mine is the handsomest

car the company has yet turned out. It was a special order."

"There's an old proverb which says, 'all isn't gold that glitters.' I

don't know whether it's apropos to anything that concerns us or not, but

we shall perhaps remember it sooner or later. Now, ladies, I think

everything is shipshape, and there's nothing to keep us any longer. How

would you like to sit? Some people think the best place beside the

driver, but--"

"Oh, _I_ wouldn't sit there for worlds with no horse in front to fall

out on in case anything happened!" exclaimed Mrs. Kidder; "and I

couldn't let Beechy either. Maida is her own mistress, and can do as she

likes."

"If that girl is going to get in the habit of sitting by Terry day after

day," I hurriedly told myself, "I might far better have let him sell his

car and grow ostriches or something in South Africa. _That_ idea shall

be nipped before it is a bud."

"I fear I should take up too much room in the tonneau," I suggested with

feigned meekness. "You ladies had better have it all to yourselves, and

then you can be comfortable. Terry and I, on the driver's seat, will act

as a kind of screen for you against the wind."

"But you really don't take up nearly as much room as Maida does in her

thick motor-coat," said Mrs. Kidder. "If she's not _afraid_--"

"Of course I'm not afraid!" cut in Maida.

"Well, then, I think it would be nicer if Sir Ralph sat with us,

Beechy," went on Mrs. Kidder, "unless it would bore him."

Naturally I had to protest that, on the contrary, such an arrangement

would be what I most desired, had I dared to consult my own selfish

wishes. And I had to see the Vestal Virgin (looking incredibly

interesting with her pure face and dark eyes framed with the motor-hood)

helped to seat herself in fatal proximity to my unfortunate friend. Talk

of a powder magazine and a lighted match!--well, there you have the

situation as I felt it, though I was powerless for the moment to avert a

catastrophe.

V

A CHAPTER OF ADVENTURES

The Prince let us take the lead. He could start twenty minutes later and

still easily pass us before the frontier, he said. He had two or three

telegrams to send, and one or two little affairs to settle; but he would

not be long in catching us up, and after that the ladies might count

upon his services in any--er--any emergency.

"He might better have gone on ahead and polished up that old castle of

his a bit before Mrs. Kidder sees it," Terry murmured to me; but we had

no right to object to the Prince's companionship, if it were agreeable

to our employers, and we uttered no audible word of dissent to his plan.

Beechy and her mother had the two corner seats in the roomy tonneau, and

I settled myself on the flap which lets down when the door is closed. In

doing this, I was not unconscious of the fact that if the fastening of

the door gave way owing to vibration or any other cause, I should

indubitably go swinging out into space; also, that if this disagreeable

accident did occur, it would be my luck to have it happen when the back

of the car was hanging over a precipice. Nevertheless I kept a calm

face. These things usually befall some one else rather than one's self;

the kind of some one else you read of over your morning coffee,

murmuring, "Dear me, how horrid!" before you take another sip.

Terry started the car, and though it carried five persons and enough

luggage for ten (I speak of men, not women), we shot away along the

perfect road, like an arrow from the bow.

At our first fine panther bound, Mrs. Kidder half rose in her seat and

seized my right arm, while Beechy's little hand clutched anxiously at my

left knee.

"Oh, mercy!" the Countess exclaimed. "Tell him not to go so fast--oh,

quick! we'll be killed."

"No, we won't, Don't be frightened; it's all right," I answered

soothingly, primed by my late experience in leaving the Châlet des Pins.

"Why, we're going slowly--_crawling_ at the rate of twenty--"

"Fifteen!" laughed our chauffeur over his shoulder.

"Fifteen miles an hour," I amended my sentence wondering in what way the

shock of surprise had affected the Vestal Virgin. Somehow I couldn't

fancy her clawing weakly at any part of Terry's person. "You wouldn't

have us go slower, would you? The Prince is sure to be watching."

"Oh, I don't _know_," wailed Mrs. Kidder. "I didn't think it would be

like this. Isn't it awful?"

"I believe I--I'm going to like it by-and-by," gasped Beechy, her eyes

as round as half-crowns, and as big. "Maida, have you _fainted_?"

Miss Destrey looked back into the tonneau, her face pale, but radiant.

"I wouldn't waste time fainting," said she. "I'm buckling on my wings."

"Wish she were a coward!" I thought. "Terry hates 'em like poison, and

would never forgive her if she didn't worship motoring at the first

go-off." As for me, I have always found a certain piquant charm in a

timid woman. There is a subtle flattery in her almost unconscious appeal

to superior courage in man which is perhaps especially sweet to an

undersized chap like me; and I had never felt more kindly to the

Countess and her daughter than I did at this moment.

As Lothair with his Corisande, I "soothed and sustained their agitated

frames" so successfully, that the appealing hands stole back to their

respective laps, but not to rest in peace for long. The car breasted the

small hill at the top of the Cap, sturdily, and we sped on towards

Mentone, which, with its twin, sickle bays, was suddenly disclosed like

a scene on the stage when the curtains have been noiselessly drawn

aside. The picture of the beautiful little town, with its background of

clear-cut mountains, called forth quavering exclamations from our

reviving passengers; but a few minutes later when we were in the long,

straight street of Mentone, weaving our swift way between coming and

going electric trams, all the good work I had accomplished had to be

done over again.

"I can't stand it," moaned Mrs. Kidder, looking, in her misery, like a

frost-bitten apple. "Oh, can't the man _see_ that street car's going to

run us down? And now there's another, coming from behind. They'll crush

us between them. Mr. Terrymore, stop--stop! I'll give you a thousand

dollars to take me back to Cap Martin. Oh, he doesn't hear! Sir

Ralph--why you're _laughing_!"

"Mamma, you'd send a mummied cat into hysterics," giggled Beechy. "I

guess together we'd make the fortune of a dime museum, if they could

show us now. But the cars _didn't_ run over us, did they?"

"No, but the next ones will--and oh, this cart! Mr. Terrymore's the

queerest man, he's steering right for it. No, we've missed it _this_

time."

"We'll miss it every time, you'll see," I reassured her. "Barrymore is a

magnificent driver; and look, Miss Destrey isn't nervous at all."

"She hasn't got as much to live for as Mamma and I have," said Beechy,

trying to hide the fact that she was holding on to the side of the car.

"You might almost as well be smashed in an automobile as end your days

in a convent."

Here was a revelation, but before I had time to question the speaker

further, she and her mother were clinging to me again as if I were a

Last Straw or a Forlorn Hope.

This sort of thing lasted for four or five minutes, which doubtless

appeared long to them, but they were not in the least tedious for me. I

was quite enjoying myself as a Refuge for Shipwrecked Mariners, and I

was rather sorry than otherwise when the mariners began to find their

own bearings. They saw that, though their escapes seemed to be by the

breadth of a hair, they always were escapes, and that no one was anxious

except themselves. They probably remembered, also, that we were not

pioneers in the sport of motoring; that some thousands of other people

had done what we were doing now, if not worse, and still lived to tell

the tale--with exaggerations.

Presently the strained look left their faces; their bodies became less

rigid; and when they began to take an interest in the shops and villas I

knew that the worst was over. My arm and knee felt lonely and deserted,

as if their mission in life had been accomplished, and they were now

mere obstacles, occupying unnecessary space in the tonneau.

As for Terry, I could see by the set of his shoulders and the way he

held his head that he was pleased with life, for he is one of those

persons who shows his feelings in his back. He had fought against the

idea of this trip, but now that the idea was crystallizing into fact he

was happy in spite of himself. After all, what could he ask for that he

had not at this moment? The steering wheel of his beloved motor

(preserved for him by my cunning) under his hand; beside him a plucky

and beautiful girl; behind him a devoted friend; in front, the fairest

country in the world, and a road which would lead him to the Alps and to

Piedmont; to stately Milan and to the blue, rapturous reaches of Como; a

road that would beckon him on and on, past villages sleeping under

cypresses on sunny hillsides to Verona, the city of the "star-crossed

lovers;" to Giotto's Padua, and by peerless Venice to strange Dalmatia,

where Christian and Moslem look distrustfully into one anothers' eyes.

What all this would be to Terry I knew, even though he was playing a