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things that she can’t do.”
    Midge stared. He went on:
    â€œShe gets away with things. She always has.” He smiled. “She’s flouted the traditions of Government House—she’s played merry hell with precedence at dinner parties (and that, Midge, is a black crime!). She’s put deadly enemies next to each other at the dinner table, and run riot over the colour question! And instead of raising one big almighty row and setting everyone at loggerheads and bringing disgrace on the British Raj—I’m damned if she hasn’t got away with it! That trick of hers—smiling at people and looking as though she couldn’t help it! Servants are the same—she gives them any amount of trouble and they adore her.”
    â€œI know what you mean,” said Midge thoughtfully. “Things that you wouldn’t stand from anyone else, you feel are all right if Lucy does them. What is it, I wonder? Charm? Magnetism?”
    Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œShe’s always been the same from a girl—only sometimes I feel it’s growing on her. I mean that she doesn’t realize that there are limits. Why, I really believe, Midge,” he said, amused, “that Lucy would feel she could get away with murder!”
    II
    Henrietta got the Delage out from the garage in the Mews and, after a wholly technical conversation with her friend Albert, who looked after the Delage’s health, she started off.
    â€œRunning a treat, miss,” said Albert.
    Henrietta smiled. She shot away down the Mews, savouring the unfailing pleasure she always felt when setting off in the car alone. She much preferred to be alone when driving. In that way she could realize to the full the intimate personal enjoyment that driving a car brought to her.
    She enjoyed her own skill in traffic, she enjoyed nosing out new shortcuts out of London. She had routes of her own and when driving in London itself had as intimate a knowledge of its streets as any taxi driver.
    She took now her own newly discovered way southwest, turning and twisting through intricate mazes of suburban streets.
    When she came finally to the long ridge of Shovel Down it was half past twelve. Henrietta had always loved the view from that particular place. She paused now just at the point where the road began to descend. All around and below her were trees, trees whose leaves were turning from gold to brown. It was a world incredibly golden and splendid in the strong autumn sunlight.
    Henrietta thought: “I love autumn. It’s so much richer than spring.”
    And suddenly one of those moments of intense happiness came to her—a sense of the loveliness of the world—of her own intense enjoyment of that world.
    She thought: “I shall never be as happy again as I am now—never.”
    She stayed there a minute, gazing out over that golden world that seemed to swim and dissolve into itself, hazy and blurred with its own beauty.
    Then she came down over the crest of the hill, down through the woods, down the long steep road to The Hollow.
    III
    When Henrietta drove in, Midge was sitting on the low wall of the terrace, and waved to her cheerfully. Henrietta was pleased to see Midge, whom she liked.
    Lady Angkatell came out of the house and said:
    â€œOh, there you are, Henrietta. When you’ve taken your car into the stables and given it a bran mash, lunch will be ready.”
    â€œWhat a penetrating remark of Lucy’s,” said Henrietta as she drove round the house, Midge accompanying her on the step. “You know, I always prided myself on having completely escaped the horsy taint of my Irish forebears. When you’ve been brought up amongst people who talk nothing but horse, you go all superior about not caring for them. And now Lucy has just shown me that I treat my car exactly like a horse. It’s quite true. I do.”
    â€œI know,” said Midge. “Lucy is quite devastating.