didn't give me the thrill it ought, because time was getting on when we
flew past it, and I would have been capable of eating vulgar bread and
cheese under its wickedly historic roof if I had been invited.

"Do you suppose they know anything about the road and its history?" I
asked the chauffeur, with a slight gesture of my swathed head toward the
solid wall of glass which was our background.

"They? Certainly not, and don't want to know," he answered with an air
of assurance.

"Why do they go about in motors then," I wondered, "if they don't take
interest in things they pass?"

"You must understand as well as I do why this sort of person goes about
in motors," said he. "They go because other people go--because it's the
thing. The 'other people' whom they slavishly imitate may really like
the exhilaration, the ozone, the sight-seeing, or all three; but to this
type the only part that matters is letting it be seen that they've got a
handsome car, and being able to say 'We've just come from the Riviera in
our sixty-horse-power motor-car.' They'd always mention the power."

"Lady Turnour did, even to me," I remembered. "But is Sir Samuel like
that?"

"No, to do him justice, he isn't, poor man. But his wife is his
Juggernaut. I believe he enjoys lying under her wheels, or thinks he
does--which is the same thing."

"Have you been with them long?" I dared to inquire.