I groaned while I obeyed.  “I’ve been an expense to you all the way, because you wouldn’t abandon me to the lions, even in the most expensive hotels, where I knew you wouldn’t have stayed if it hadn’t been for me.  And now, this!”

“It cost only a few francs,” he tried to reassure me.  “We’ll sell it again—­afterward, if that will make you happier.  But sufficient for the day is the rug thereof—­at least, I hope it will be.  And don’t flaunt it, for if her ladyship sees there’s an extra rug of any sort on board she’ll be clamouring for it by and by.”

Northward we started, in the teeth of the wind, which made mine chatter until I began to tingle with the rush of ozone, which always goes to my head like champagne.  Our road was a mere white thread winding loosely through a sinuous valley, and pulled taut as it rose nearer and nearer to the cold, high level of les Causses, the roof of that gnome-land where we had journeyed together yesterday.  From snow-covered billows which should have been sprayed with mountain wild-flowers by now, a fierce blast pounced down on us like a swooping bird of prey.  We felt the swift whirr of its wings, which almost took our breath away, and made the Aigle quiver; but like a bull that meets its enemy with lowered horns, the brave car’s bonnet seemed to defy the wind and face it squarely.  We swept on toward the snow-reaches whence the wind-torrent came.  Soon we were on the flat plateau of the Causse, where last year’s faded grass was frosted white, and a torn winding-sheet wrapped the limbs of a dead world.  There was no beauty in this death, save the wild beauty of desolation, and a grandeur inseparable from heights.  Before us grouped the mountains of Auvergne, hoary headed; and looking down we could see the twistings of the road we had travelled, whirling away and away, like the blown tail of a kite trailed over mountain and foothill.

“The people at Millau told me I should get up to St. Flour all right, in spite of the fall of snow,” said the chauffeur, his eyes on the great white waves that piled themselves against a blue-white sky, “but I begin to think there’s trouble before us, and I don’t know whether I ought to have persisted in bringing you.”

“Persisted!” I echoed, defending him against himself.  “Why, do you suppose wild horses would have dragged Lady Turnour in any other direction, now that she’s actually invited to be the guest of a marquis in a real live castle?”

“A railway train could very well have dragged her in the same direction and got her to the castle as soon, if not a good deal sooner than she’s likely to get in this car, if we have to fight snow.  I proposed this way originally because I wanted you to see the Gorge of the Tarn, and because I thought that you’d like Clermont-Ferrand, and the road there.  It was to be your adventure, you know, and I shall feel a brute if I let you in for a worse one than I bargained for.  Even this morning it wasn’t too late.  I could have hinted at horrors, and they would have gone by rail like lambs, taking you with them.”