“I have always had a fancy to spend a winter on Exmoor,” he confided.

“It has its compensations,” she agreed, “apart, of course, from the hunting.”

He felt the desire to speak of more vital things.  What did hunting or chaperons more or less matter to the Lady Janes of the world!  Already he knew enough of her to be sure that she would have her way in any crisis that might arise.  “How much of the year,” he asked, “do you actually spend here?”

“As much as I can.”

“You are content to be here alone, even in the winter?”

“More contented than I should be anywhere else,” she assured him.  “There is always plenty to do, useful work, too—­things that count.”

“London?”

“Bores me terribly,” she confessed.

“Foreign travel?”

She nodded more tolerantly.

“I have done a little of it,” she said.  “I should love to do more, but travel as travel is such an unsatisfying thing.  If a place attracts you, you want to imbibe it.  Travel leaves you no time to do anything but sniff.  Life is so short.  One must concentrate or one achieves nothing.  I know what the general idea of a stay-at-home is,” she went on.  “Many of my friends consider me narrow.  Perhaps I am.  Anyhow, I prefer to lead a complete and, I believe, useful life here, to looking back in later years upon that hotchpotch of lurid sensations, tangled impressions and restless moments that most of them call life.”

“You display an amazing amount of philosophy for your years,” he ventured, after a little hesitation.  “There is one instinct, however, which you seem to ignore.”

“What is it, please?”

“Shall I call it the gregarious one, the desire for companionship of young people of your own age?”

She shrugged her shoulders.  She had the air of one faintly amused by his diffidence.

“You mean that I ought to be husband hunting,” she said.  “I quite admit that a husband would be a very wonderful addition to life.  I have none of the sentiments of the old maid.  On the other hand, I am rather a fatalist.  If any man is likely to come my way whom I should care to marry, he is just as likely to find me here as though I tramped the thoroughfares of the world, searching for him.  At last!” she went on, in a changed tone, as she poured out his coffee.  “I do hope you will find it good.  The cigarettes are at your elbow.  This is quite one of the moments of life, isn’t it?”

He agreed with her emphatically.

“A counsel of perfection,” he murmured, as he sniffed the delicate Turkish tobacco.  “Tell me some more about yourself?”

She shook her head.

“I am much too selfish a person,” she declared, “and nothing that I do or say or am amounts to very much.  I want you to let me a little way into your life.  Talk either about your soldiering or your politics.  You have been a Cabinet Minister and you will be again.  Tell me what it feels like to be one of the world’s governors?”