The Londoner acquiesced without enthusiasm, and Von Salzinger reëntered the cab, and slammed the door closed behind him. That was his mood. He had been prepared to make the journey, but he was irritated that he had to do so.
In twenty minutes the cab had threaded its way on to the Oxford Road, and, regardless of all speed limit, raced on towards the famous Chiltern Hills.
Already the early autumn leaves were beginning to fall under the freshening breeze. The hedges were beginning to lose their trim appearance, and the dust-laden leaves on the midsummer growths wore a mildewed aspect that somehow matched the lank, weedy grass of the road banks. The roads were dry, and the fields looked dry. There was a weary look about the countryside as though Nature had completed her summer's work, and was eagerly looking forward to her winter rest.
A solitary horsewoman was leisurely riding down one of the tarred roads approaching Wednesford. Her horse was steaming, and her obvious intent was to cool him down before reaching her destination. Presently she turned off upon a narrow country lane, whose surface was no advertisement for the zeal of the local urban council. It was rough, and deep in dust, with overgrown hedges crowding in upon its narrow limits in a manner which forced her to keep an accurate middle course.
But Princess Vita was not only cooling down her horse after a joyous gallop upon an adjacent gorse-laden common. She was thinking deeply, dreaming as only a woman of romantic ideals can dream. Nor were her thoughts with the rural picture through which she was now moving, and which her ardent heart loved. She was gazing back over past moments so recently spent in the heart of the great capital. Just now her whole mind was filled with thoughts of _the man_. And so she had no room for any other consideration.
For the moment the affairs which had brought this man and herself together were powerless to disturb her dreaming. The sweet, fragrant air of the autumn countryside was filling her lungs, a sense of well-being pervaded her body in the exercise in which she delighted, and so the youthful heart of her had turned aside from the cares which lurked in the background, and sought only the image of the man who was already beginning to occupy so great a part of her life.