“Who’s superstitious now?” I taunted him, as he searched the tool-box in the same way a child ransacks a Christmas stocking.

“Oh, about motor-cars!  That’s a different thing,” said he calmly.  “Cold, isn’t it?  My fingers are so stiff they feel as if they were all thumbs.”

“Et tu, Brute,” I wailed.  “For goodness’ sake, don’t let her hear you.  She’s capable even now of turning back.  The invitation to the chateau hasn’t come—­and we’re not safely in the gorges yet.”

“Nor shan’t be soon, if this sort of thing keeps on,” remarked the chauffeur.  “We shall have to lunch at Alais.”

“You say that as if it was the devil’s kitchen.”

“There’s probably first rate cooking in the devil’s kitchen; I’m not so sure about the inns at Alais.”

“But it’s arranged to picnic on the road to-day for the first time, you know.  They put up such good things at Nimes, and I was to make coffee in the tea-basket.”

“That’s why I wanted to get on.  Picnic country doesn’t begin till after Alais.  Who could lunch on a dull roadside like this?  Only a starving tramp wouldn’t get indigestion.”

It was true, and I began to detest the unknown Alais.  Perhaps, after all, we might sweep through the place, I thought, without the idea of lunch occurring to the passengers.  But Mr. Dane’s heart-to-heart talk with the Aigle resulted in quite a lengthy argument; and no sooner did a town group itself in the distance than Sir Samuel knocked on the glass behind us.

“What place is this?” he asked.

“Alais,” was the answer the chauffeur made with his lips, while his eyebrows said “I told you so!” to me.

“I think we’d better lunch here,” Sir Samuel went on.  And the arrival of a princely blue motor car at the nearest inn was such a shock to the nerves of the landlady and her staff that the interval before lunch was as long and solemn as the Dead March in Saul.  To show what he could do in an emergency, the chef slaughtered and cooked every animal within reach for miles around.

They appeared in a procession, according to their kind, when necessary disguised in rich and succulent sauces which did credit to the creator’s imagination; and there were reserve forces of cakes, preserves, and puddings, all of which coldly furnished forth the servants’ meal when they had served our betters.

It was nearly three o’clock when we were ready to leave Alais, and the chauffeur had on his bronze-statue expression as he took his seat beside me after starting the car.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said he, “except that I don’t know where we’re likely to lay our heads to-night.”

“Where do you want to lay them?” I inquired flippantly.  “Any gorge will do for mine.”

“It won’t for Lady Turnour’s.  But it may have to, and in that case she will probably snap yours off.”

“Cousin Catherine has often told me it was of no use to me, except to show my hair.  But aren’t there hotels in the gorge of the Tarn?”