TO
THE LADY AILEEN WYNDHAM-QUIN
CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE
CHAPTER 1
As the large motor swung along with the easy velocity and assurance of some enormous bird, Camilla Lancing nestled more cosily into the warmth of her fur wraps.
Rupert Haverford was driving, and he looked back every now and then to see if his guest was comfortable.
"Is this too quick for you?" he asked once; and Mrs. Lancing only shook her head with a smile.
"It is too delightful," she answered.
The little town where they had been lunching lay far, far away in the distance now, its ugliness softened by the mingling of sun and haze, and the country through which they were passing was very open; in a degree bleak. On one hand marshland and rough common ground, and on the other the beach inland, then stretches of wet sand, and then the restless, murmuring sea, bearing on its shimmering surface the cold embrace of the setting November sun.
Mrs. Lancing sighed involuntarily as she looked dreamily away to where the sky and sea seemed to meet, but her sigh was an unconscious tribute to the graciousness of the circumstances in which she found herself.