Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis

Lockert called for them in a long, sumptuous, two-seater Sunbeam which he drove himself. He insisted that there was plenty of room in the seat for the three of them, but it seemed to Sam that they were crowded, and that Fran, glossy in her gray squirrel coat and her small cloche hat, snuggled too contentedly against Lockert's shoulder.

He forgot it in the pleasure of driving from the lowering smoke of London to the winter sunshine of the country; gray fields beginning to stir with green, breathing a faint bright mist, above which, in the shining branches of the trees, the rooks were jubilant. Little villages he saw, with homely tea rooms and inn signs--"The Rose and Crown," "The Green Dragon," and "The Faithful Friend"; then thatched farmhouses, oasthouses--he could not understand what these domestic lighthouses might be--and on a ridge the splayed ruin of a castle, his first castle!