Of course, I know that I’m not exactly plain, and that the contrast between my eyes and hair is a little out of the common; so, as soon as I remembered that he hadn’t seen me before, I guessed more or less what his almost startled look meant.  Still, I suppose most girls—­anyway, half-French, half-American girls—­would have done exactly what I proceeded to do.

I looked as innocent as a fluffy chicken when it first sidles out of its eggshell into the wide, wide world; and said:  “Oh, I do hope I haven’t a smudge on the end of my nose?”

“No,” replied the chauffeur, instantly becoming expressionless.  “Why do you ask?”

“Only I was afraid, from your face, that there was something wrong.”

“So far as I can see, there’s nothing wrong,” said he, calmly, and broke a piece of bread.  “Very good butter, this, that they give to nous autres,” he went on, in the same tone of voice, and my respect for him increased.

(Men are really rather nice creatures, take them all in all!)

As he had sacrificed his duty to the car for me, I sacrificed my duty to my digestion for him, and bolted my luncheon.  Then, when released from guard duty, he returned to his true allegiance, and I ventured to walk on the terrace to admire the view.

Far away it stretched, over garden, and pineland, and flowery meadow-spaces, to the blue, silver-sewn sea, which to my fancy looked Homeric.  Nothing modern caught the eye to break the romance of the illusion.  All was as it might have been twenty or thirty centuries ago, when on the Mediterranean sailed “Phoenicians, mariners renowned, greedy merchantmen with countless gauds in a black ship.”

I had just begun to play that I was a young woman of Tyre, taken on an adventurous excursion by an indulgent father, when presto!  Lady Turnour’s voice brought me back to the present with a jump.  There’s nothing Homeric about her!

She and Sir Samuel had finished their luncheon, and so had several other people.  There was an exodus of well-dressed, nice-looking women from dining-room to terrace, and conscious that I ought to have been herding among their maids, I fled with haste and humility.  What right had I, in this sweet place divinely fit to be a rest-cure for goddesses tired of the social diversions of Olympus?

I scuttled off to the car, and stood ready to serve my mistress when it should please her to be tucked under her rugs.

Despite delays, the chauffeur had finished whatever had to be done, and soon we were spinning away from Valescure, far away, into a world of flowers.

Black cypresses soared skyward, so clean cut, so definite, that I seemed to hear them, crystal-shrill, like the sharp notes in music, as they leaped darkly out from a silver monotone of olives and a delicate ripple of pearly plum or pear blossom.  Mimosas poured floods of gold over the spring landscape, blazing violently against the cloudless blue.  Bloom of peach and apple tree garlanded our road on either side; the way was jewelled with roses; and acres of hyacinths stretched into the distance, their perfume softening the keenness of the breeze.