He was not a stranger in the country to which we were going, though he had never entered it by this gate, and most of his motoring had been done in France; but I knew that he would revel in visiting once more the places he loved, in his own car.
"Have you ever been in Italy?" I asked the Countess, but she was evilly fascinated by a dog which seemed bent on committing suicide under our car, and it was Beechy who answered.
"We've never been anywhere before, any of us," she said. "Mamma and I only had our machinery set running a few months ago, but now we are wound up, goodness knows how far we'll get. As for Maida—she's no mechanical doll like us. But do you know the play about the statue that came to life?"
"Galatea?" I suggested.
"Yes, that's the name. Maida's like that; and I suppose she'll go back as soon as she can, and ask to be turned into a statue again."
"What do you mean?" I ventured to inquire; for these hints of the child's about her cousin were gradually consuming me to a grey ash with curiosity.
"I can't tell you what I mean, because I promised I wouldn't. But that's what Maida means."
"What she means?"
"Yes, to go back and be turned into a statue, forever and ever."
I ought to have been glad that the girl destined herself for a colder fate than a union with a happy-go-lucky Irishman as poor as herself, but somehow I was not glad. Watching the light glint on a tendril of spun gold which had blown out from the motor-hood, I could not wish her young heart to be turned to marble in that mysterious future to which Beechy Kidder hinted she was self-destined.