The chauffeur accepted the gift and stopped the car to light up.
'Have you got the baccy?' he asked suddenly.
'Have I got what?'
The chauffeur's face fell.
'Her ladyship wired to you to bring two pounds of Player's Navy Cut.
That's why I fixed it up with the Customs people not to open your luggage.'
'I never got the wire.'
'Damn!'
'What on earth does her ladyship want with two pounds of Player's Navy Cut?' He spoke with hauteur.
He did not like the chauffeur's exclamation.
The fellow gave him a sidelong glance in which Carruthers read a certain insolence.
'We can't get it here,' he said briefly.
He threw away with what looked very like exasperation the Egyptian cigarette Carruthers had given him and started off again.
He looked sulky.
He said nothing more.
Carruthers felt that his efforts at sociability had been a mistake.
For the rest of the journey he ignored the chauffeur.
He adopted the frigid manner that he had used so successfully as secretary at the Embassy when a member of the British public came to him for assistance.
For some time they had been running up hill and now they came to a long low wall and then to an open gate.
The chauffeur turned in.
'Have we arrived?' cried Carruthers.
'Sixty-five kilometres in fifty-seven minutes,' said the chauffeur, a smile suddenly showing his fine white teeth.
'Not so bad considering the road.'
He sounded his klaxon shrilly.
Carruthers was breathless with excitement.
They drove up a narrow road through an olive grove, and came to a low, white, rambling house.
Betty was standing at the door.
He jumped out of the car and kissed her on both cheeks.
For a moment he could not speak.
But subconsciously he noticed that at the door stood an elderly butler in white ducks and a couple of footmen in the fustanellas of their country.
They were smart and picturesque.
Whatever Betty permitted her chauffeur it was evident that the house was run in the civilized style suited to her station.
She led him through the hall, a large apartment with whitewashed walls in which he was vaguely conscious of handsome furniture, into the drawing-room.
This was also large and low, with the same whitewashed walls, and he had immediately an impression of comfort and luxury.
'The first thing you must do is to come and look at my view,' she said.
'The first thing I must do is to look at you.'
She was dressed in white.
Her arms, her face, her neck, were deeply burned by the sun; her eyes were bluer than he had ever seen them and the whiteness of her teeth was startling.
She looked extremely well.
She was very trim and neat.
Her hair was waved, her nails were manicured; he had had a moment's anxiety that in the easy life she led on this romantic isle she had let herself go.
'Upon my word you look eighteen, Betty.
How do you manage it?'
'Happiness,' she smiled.
It gave him a momentary pang to hear her say this.
He did not want her to be too happy.
He wanted to give her happiness.
But now she insisted on taking him out on the terrace.
The drawing-room had five long windows that led out to it and from the terrace the olive-clad hill tumbled steeply to the sea.
There was a tiny bay below in which a white boat, mirrored on the calm water, lay at anchor.