g
beforehand where I was going. I said that, on the contrary, I should
_like_ it. That seemed to please him. He helped me in (not that I needed
it), the car started with a touch, and we began to thread the streets of
the town behind the Chateau, I wondering _what_ was going to happen.
When I had been in this car before, it was to travel "on the rims," you
know. Now, on our four-plump new Michelins from Paris it was like being
in a balloon, so easy was the motion even over the badly paved streets.

We wound round under the high wall of the Chateau, and came in a few
minutes to a huge gateway. As we slowed down this gateway opened
mysteriously from within to show a dim corkscrew of a road winding
upward. I opened my mouth to ask an astonished question; then I thought
better of it and kept still, though I know my eyes must have been
snapping when Brown actually drove the car in. The gateway clanged
behind us, as if by enchantment, shutting us into a twilight region, and
behold, we were mounting the incline of the great tower, up which,
perhaps, nobody had ever driven since the days of Mary Stuart.

Wasn't it _kind_ of Brown to remember my wish (which even I had
forgotten!) to drive up the tower? I could hardly thank him enough for
such a new and thrilling sensation as it was, twisting up and up,
seeming to float in the vast hollow of the passage, the exquisite carved
and vaulted roof giving back a rhythmical reverberation of the throbbing
of our motor.

I couldn't even say "thank you," though, except in my thoughts, till we
got to the top (which we did much too soon), for somehow it would have
broken the charm to speak. But I think Brown understood that I
appreciated it all, and what he had done.

At the top a big doorway stood open, and by it one of the delightful,
grizzled, dignified old dears who must have been made guardians of the
Chateau, because they fit so well into the picture. I thought, though,
that this one looked different from before, for some reason quite
flurried and almost scared. I suppose it must have been the car and the
unusualness that upset him; but Brown drove out splendidly, stopping in
the terrace-garden.

"At that door," said the charming old fellow, "Francis the First of
France received Henry the Eighth of England, who with a train of a
hundred knights rode up the sloping way in the tower. To-day is the
first time that an automobile has ever been inside the doors; therefore,
mademoiselle,