Safety" had not a wheel to stand upon.

When we were clear of Kingston, and winging lightly along the familiar Portsmouth Road, with its dark pines and purple gleams of heather, I began to feel an exhilaration scarcely short of treacherous to my principles. We were now putting on speed, and running as fast as most trains on the South-Western, yet the sensation was far removed from any I had experienced in travelling by rail, even on famous lines, which give glorious views if one does not mind cinders in the eye or the chance of having one's head knocked off like a ripe apple. I seemed to be floating in a great opaline sea of pure, fresh air; for such dust as we raised was beaten down from the tonneau by the screen, and it did not trouble us. Our speed appeared to turn the country into a panorama flying by for our amusement; and yet, fast as we went, to my surprise I was able to appreciate every feature, every incident of the road. Each separate beauty of the way was threaded like a bead on a rosary.

Here was Sandown Park, which I had regarded as the goal of a respectable drive from town, with horses; but we were taking it, so to speak, in our first stride. Esher was no sooner left behind than quaint old sleepy Cobham came to view; between there and Ripley was but a gliding step over a road which slipped like velvet under our wheels. Then a fringe of trees netted across a blue, distant sea of billowing hills, and a few minutes later we were sailing under Guildford's suspended clock.

It was somewhere near the hour of one when Molly brought the car gently to a standstill by the roadside, and announced that she would not go a yard further without lunch. The chauffeur successfully took up the part of butler at a moment's notice, busying himself with the baskets, spreading a picnic cloth under a shady tree, and putting a bottle of Graves to cool in a neighbouring brook. Meanwhile Molly was doing mysterious things with her chafing-dish and several little china jars. By the time Jack and I had with awkward alacrity bestowed plates, glasses, knives, and forks on the most hummocky portions of the cloth, white and rosy flakes of lobster à la Newburg were simmering appetisingly in a creamy froth.

I was deeply interested in this cult of the chafing-dish, which could, in an incredibly short time, serve up by the wayside a little feast fit for a king—who had not got dyspepsia.

"Can't you imagine the programme if we had gone to an inn?" asked Jack, proud of his bride's handiwork. "We should have walked into a dingy dining-room, with brown wallpaper and four steel engravings of bloodthirsty scenes from the Old Testament. A sleepy head waiter would have looked at me with a polite but puzzled expression, as if at a loss to know why on earth we had come. I should have enquired deprecatingly: 'What can you give us for lunch?' What would he have replied?"

"There's only one possible answer to that conundrum, and it doesn't take any guessing," said I. "The reply would have been: 'Cold 'am or beef, sir; chops, if you choose to wait.' Those words are probably now being spoken to some hundreds of sad travellers less fortunate than our favoured and sylvan selves."

"If you would like to have a chafing-dish in your family," remarked Jack, "you'll have to marry an American girl."

"I'm no Duke," said I.

"Earls aren't to be despised, if there are no Dukes handy," said Molly. "Besides, it's getting a little obvious to marry a Duke."

"Which is the reason you took up with a chauffeur," retorted Jack.

"You call yourself a 'penniless hearl,'" went on Molly, "and I suppose, of course, you are 'belted.' All earls are, in poetry and serials, which must be convenient when you're really very poor, because if you're hungry, you can always take a reef in your belt, while mere plain men have no such resource. Have you got yours on now?"

"It's in pawn," said I. "It's no joke about being penniless. Jack will tell you I'm obliged to let my dear old house in Oxfordshire, and the only luxuries I can afford are a few horses and a few books. I prefer them to necessities—since I can't have both."

I thought that Molly might laugh, but instead she looked abnormally grave. "Jack told me," she said, "how, when you and he came over to America, six or seven years ago, to shoot big game, you avoided girls, for fear people might suppose your alleged bear hunt was really an heiress hunt. I forgive Jack, because that was in the dark ages, before he knew there was a Me. But why should a girl be shunned by nice men solely because she's an heiress? Can't she be as pretty and lovable in herself as a poor girl?"

"She can," I replied, emphasising my words with a look in Molly's face. "No doubt she often is. But I do wish some American girls who marry men from our side of the water wouldn't let the papers advertise their weddings as 'functions' (sounds like obscure workings of physical organs), attended by the families of their exclusive acquaintance, worth, when lumped together, a billion of dollars or so."

"I know. It's as if they were prize pigs at a fair, and were of no importance except for their dollars," sighed Molly. "And then, the detectives to watch the presents! It's disgusting. But some of our newspapers are like Mr. Hyde. Poor Dr. Jekyll can't do anything with him; and anyhow, you needn't think we're all like that. I have a friend who is one of the greatest heiresses in America, but she hates her money. It has made her very unhappy, though she's only twenty-one years old. If you could see Mercédès, with her lovely, strange sad face, and big, wistful eyes––"

"I can think of Mercédès only with a shiny grey body, upholstered crimson; and for eyes, huge acetylene lamps," I was rude enough to break in; for I fancied that I saw what Mistress Molly would fain be up to, and my heart was not of the rubber-ball description, to be caught in the rebound. If Molly cherished a secret intention of springing her peerless friend Mercédès upon me, during this tour which she had organised, it seemed better for everyone concerned that the hope should be nipped in the bud. It was with unwonted meekness that she yielded to being suppressed, and I suffered immediate pangs of remorse. To atone, I did my best to be agreeable. All the way to Southampton I praised automobiles in general and hers in particular; admitted that in half a day I had become half a convert; and soon I had the pleasure of believing that the divine Molly had forgotten my sin.