Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/91

Rh "I beg your pardon, my lady; I only thought that, as a rule, the best people do feel bound to know these things. But of course ⸺" He paused deferentially, without a twinkle in his eye, though I was pressing my lips tightly together, and trying not to shake spasmodically.

"Oh, well, go on. What else does the old boy say, then?" groaned Lady Turnour, martyrisée.

Mr. Bane or Dane did n't dare to glance at me. With perfect gravity he translated the guide's best bits, enlarging upon them here and there in a way which showed that he had independent knowledge of his own. And it was a feather in his cap that his eloquence eventually interested Lady Turnour. She made him tell her again how Fréjus was Claustra Gallæ to Cæsar, and how it was the "Caput" for this part of the wonderful Via Aurelia, which started at Rome, never ending until it came to Arles.

"Why, we 've been to Rome, and we 're going to Arles," she exclaimed. "We can tell people we 've been over the whole of the Via Aurelia, can't we? We need n't mention that the automobile did n't arrive till after we got to Cannes. And anyway, you say there were once theatres there, and at Antibes, like the one at Fréjus, so we 've been making a kind of Roman pilgrimage all along, if we 'd only known it."

"It is considered quite the thing to do, in Roman amphitheatres, to make a tour of the prisoners' cells and gladiators' dressing-rooms, the guide says," insinuated the chauffeur. And then, when the bride and bridegroom, reluctant but conscientious, were swimming round the vast bowl of masonry, like tea-leaves floating in a great cup, he turned to me.