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 needn't mention that the automobile didn'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.

"Why don't you thank me?" he inquired. "I was doing it for you. I knew
you hated to miss all this, and I saw she meant to go on, so I
intervened, in the only way I could think of, to touch her."

"If you're always as clever as that, I don't see why this shouldn't be
_our_ trip," I said. "That will be a consolation."

"I'm afraid you'll often need more consolation than that," he answered.
"Lady Turnour is--as the Americans say--a pretty 'stiff proposition.'"

"Still, if you can hypnotize her into going to all the places, and