Suddenly it struck me that Providence must have a vast sense of humour, and that the little inhabitants of this earth, high and low, must afford It a great deal of benevolent amusement.

All too soon we swept out of the forest, straight into a little town, St. Maxime, with a picturesque port of its own, where red-sailed fishing boats lolled as idly as the dark-eyed young men in cafes near the shore.  A few tourists walking out from the hotel on the hill gazed rather curiously at us in our fine blue car; and we gazed away from them, across a sapphire gulf, to the distant houses of St. Tropez, banked high against a promontory of emerald.

I should have liked to run on to St. Tropez, for I knew his pretty legend; how he was one of the guards of St. Paul in prison, and was converted by the eloquence of his captive; but the chauffeur said that, after La Foux (famed home of miniature horses) the coast road would lose its surface of velvet.  It would be laced in and out with crossings of a local railway line, and there would be so many bumps that Lady Turnour was certain to wake up very cross.

“For your sake I don’t want to make her cross,” said he, and turned inland; but the way was no less beautiful.  The pines were tired of running after us, but great cork trees marched beside the road, like an army of crusaders in disarray, half in, half out, of armour.  Above, rose the Mountains of the Moors, whose very name seemed to ring with the distant echo of a Saracen war song; and here and there, on a bare, wild hillside, towered all that was left of some ancient castle, fallen into ruin.  Cogolin was fine, and Grimaud was even finer.

Up a steep ascent, through shadowy forests we had passed, now and then coming suddenly upon a little red-roofed village nestling among the trees as a strawberry among its leaves, when abruptly we flashed out where spaces of sky and silver sea opened.  Between hills that seemed to sweep a curtsey to us, we flew down an apple-paring road toward Hyeres.

The Turnours had lunched, if not wisely, probably too well, at Valescure about one o’clock, and it wasn’t yet four; but the air at the beautiful Costebelle hotels is said to be perpetually glittering with Royalties and other bright beings of the great world, so her ladyship wouldn’t have been persuaded to miss the place.

Not that anyone tried to persuade her, for the two powers behind the throne (and in front of the car) wanted to go—­not to see the Royalties, but the beauties of Costebelle itself.

We slipped gently through the town of Hyeres, whose avenues of giant palms looked like great sea anemones turned into trees, and then spurted up a hill into a vast and fragrant grove that smelled of a thousand flowers.  In the grove stood three hotels, with wide views over jade-green lagoons to an indigo sea; and at the most charming of the trio we stopped.

Nothing was said about tea for the two servants, but while the “quality” had theirs on an exquisite terrace, the chauffeur brought a steaming cup to me, as I sat in the car.