Even she could find no fault.  The effect was twice as chic and becoming as that of yesterday.  She looked younger, and nearer to being the grande dame that she burns to be.  I saw various emotions working in her mind, and attributed her silence on the subject of my personal defects (unchanged despite her orders) to the success I was making with her toilet.  In her eyes, I began to take on lustre as a Treasure not to be lightly thrown away on the turn of a dye.

When she was dressed and painted to represent a “lady motorist,” it was my business to pack not only for her but for Sir Samuel, who is the sort of man to be miserable under the domination of a valet.  There were a round dozen of trunks, which had to be sent on by rail, and there was also luggage for the automobile; such ingenious and pretty luggage (bran new, like everything of her ladyship’s, not excepting her complexion) that it was really a pleasure to pack it.  As for the poor motor maid, it was broken to her that she must, figuratively speaking, live in a bag during the tour, and that bag must have a place under her feet as she sat beside the driver.  It might make her as uncomfortable as it liked, but whatever it did, it must on no account interfere with the chauffeur.

We were supposed to start at ten, but a woman of Lady Turnour’s type doesn’t think she’s making herself of enough importance unless she keeps people waiting.  She changed her mind three times about her veil, and had her dressing-bag (a gorgeous affair, beside which mine is a mere nutshell) reopened at the last minute to get out different hatpins.

It was half-past ten when the luggage for the automobile was ready to be taken away, and having helped my mistress into her motoring coat, I left her saying farewell to some hotel acquaintances she had scraped up, and went out to put her ladyship’s rugs into the car.

I had not seen it yet, nor the dreaded chauffeur, my galley-companion; but as the front door opened, voila both; the car drawn up at the hotel entrance, the chauffeur dangling from its roof.

Never did I see anything in the way of an automobile so large, so azure, so magnificent, so shiny as to varnish, so dazzling as to brass and crystal.

Perhaps the windows aren’t really crystal, but they were all bevelly and glittering in the sunshine, and seemed to run round the car from back to front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor.  Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and so like a vague, over-ripe tomato.  Never was a chauffeur so long, so slim, so smart, so leathery.

He was dangling not because he fancied himself as a tassel, but because he was teaching some last piece of luggage to know its place on the roof it was shaped to fit.

“Thank goodness, at least he’s not fat, and won’t take up much room,” I thought, as I stood looking at the back of his black head.