A Rolling Stone by B. M. Croker

Early in January Wynyard found himself on the Continent, roaming hither and thither as dictated by the caprice of his employer. First they went to Paris, then, leaving behind them the intricacies of the traffic, departed from that gay city by the Port de Choisy for Mellun, Sens, and Dijon. From Dijon (the Charing Cross of motors) they sped across to Biarritz, over the Pyrenees to Madrid, then back to the Riviera, _via_ Carcassonne and Toulouse.

It was Masham's custom to start at daybreak; the car was on the wing as soon as the birds. They swept along the great straight highways, by quiet sleeping farms, through low-hanging mists, and now and then past an old white-faced château, staring sternly from amidst its woods -- or again, a gaudy red villa smothered in lime trees. Masham had not overstated the case when he declared that he "took risks. " Once or twice, when they hummed along wide, empty roads, as the wind roared past their ears, and the engine vibration was such that every nerve was ajar, it appeared to the chauffeur that he was trusting his life to a madman! _Speed_, his employer's passion, seemed to grow insatiable with time -- his appetite for eating up, with furious haste, miles and miles and miles, and ever hurrying onwards to the unattainable horizon, increased with indulgence. The intoxication of motion appeared to lift him completely out of himself -- and to change his personality.