When they were safely back again in the hall of the hotel she turned to him to express her great delight at the run.
“Your car is, indeed, a magnificent one, your Highness. I’ve never been on a racer before,” she said, “but it was truly delightful. I never had a moment’s anxiety, for you are such a sure and clever driver.”
Her eye had been from time to time upon the speedometer, and she had noted the terrific rate at which they had now and then travelled, especially upon any downward incline.
The Prince, on his part, was playing the exquisite courtier. Had she been a girl of twenty he could not have paid “old crow” more attention.
As he was dressing for dinner with the aid of the faithful Charles, the Parson entered, and to him he gave an accurate description of the run, and of the rather amorous attitude the obese widow had assumed towards him.
“Good, my dear boy,” exclaimed the urbane cleric, “I told you that she’s the most perfect specimen of the snob we’ve ever met.”
A week went by—a pleasant week, during which Mrs Edmondson, her nose now an inch higher in the air than formerly, went out daily with the Prince and his chauffeur for runs around the West Riding.
One afternoon they ran over to Ripon, and thence across to the fine old ruins of Fountains Abbey. Like many women of her class and character, the buxom lady delighted in monastic ruins, and as the pair strolled about in the great, roofless transept of the Abbey she commenced an enthusiastic admiration of its architecture and dimensions. Though living at Whitby she had, curiously enough, never before visited the place.
“Crowland, in Lincolnshire is very fine,” she remarked, “but this is far finer. Yet we have nothing in England to compare with Pavia, near Milan. Have you ever been there, Prince?”
“Only through the station,” his Highness replied. Truth to tell he was not enthusiastic over ruins. He was a very modern up-to-date young man.