“I don’t believe you would care if I hadn’t,” I exclaimed.  “You are so stolid, so phlegmatic, you Englishmen!”

“Do you think so?  Well, it would have been a little awkward for me to have taken you about on a sightseeing expedition this morning if we were at daggers drawn—­no matter how appropriate the situation might have been to Avignon manners of the Middle Ages, when everybody was either torturing everybody else or fighting to the death.”

“Are you going to take me about?”

“That’s for you to say.”

“Isn’t it for Lady Turnour to say?”

“Sir Samuel told me last night that I shouldn’t be wanted till two o’clock, as he was going to see the town with her ladyship.  He wanted to know if we could sandwich in something else this afternoon, as he considered a whole day too much for one place.  I suggested Vaucluse for the afternoon, as it’s but a short spin from Avignon, and I just happened to mention that her ladyship might find use for you there, to follow her to the fountain with extra wraps in case of mistral.  I thought, of all places you’d hate to miss Vaucluse.  And we’re to come back here for the night.”

I feared that Monsieur Charretier’s sudden disappearance might upset the
Turnours’ plans, but Mr. Dane didn’t think so.  He had impressed it upon
Sir Samuel that no motorist who had not thoroughly “done” Avignon and
Vaucluse would be tolerated in automobiling circles.

He was right in his surmise, and though her ladyship was vexed at losing a new acquaintance whom it would have been “nice to know in Paris,” she resigned herself for the morning to the society of husband and Baedeker.  It was kind old Sir Samuel’s proposal that I should be left free to do some sight-seeing on my own account while they were gone (I had meant to break my own shackles); and though my lady laughed to scorn the idea that a girl of my class should care for historical associations, she granted me liberty provided I utilized it in buying her certain stay-laces, shoe-strings, and other small horrors for which no woman enjoys shopping.

When she and Sir Samuel were out of the way, as safely disposed of as Monsieur Charretier himself, I felt so extravagantly happy in reaction, after all my worries, that I danced a jig in her ladyship’s sacred bedchamber.

Then I prepared to start for my own personally conducted expedition; and this time I took no great pains to do my hair unbecomingly.  Naturally, I didn’t want to be a jarring note in harmonious Avignon, so I made myself look rather attractive for my jaunt with the chauffeur.

He was sauntering casually about the Place before the hotel, where long ago Marshal Brune was assassinated, and we walked away together as calmly as if we had been followed by a whole drove of well-trained chaperons.  When one has joined the ranks of the lower classes, one might as well reap some advantages from the change!