“Certainly,” was the gracious reply.  “You have a very distinguished visitor over at the Manor, waiting there to see you.  I came over with him and found your car on the point of starting.  I took the liberty of hunting you up so that there should be no delay in your return.”

“And who may this distinguished visitor he?” Tallente enquired, with unconscious sarcasm.  “Stephen Dartrey,” Miller answered.  “He and Miss Miall and I are staying not far from you.”

“Stephen Dartrey?” Lady Jane murmured.  “Dartrey?” Tallente echoed.  “Do you mean to say that he is over at the Manor now?”

“Waiting to see you,” Miller announced, and for a moment there was a little gleam of displeasure in his eyes.  Lady Jane sighed.  “Now, if only you’d brought him over with you, Mr. Miller,” she said, a shade more amiably, “you would have given me real pleasure.  There is no man whom I am more anxious to meet.”  Miller smiled tolerantly.  “Dartrey is a very difficult person,” he declared.  “Although he is the leader of our party, and before very long will be the leader of the whole Labour Party, although he could be Prime Minister to-morrow if he cared about it; he is one of the most retiring men whom I ever knew.  At the present moment I believe that he would have preferred to have remained living his hermit’s life, a writer and a dilettante, if circumstances had not dragged him into politics.  He lives in the simplest way and hates all society save the company of a few old cronies.”

“What does Dartrey want with me?” Tallente interrupted, a little brusquely.  “It is no part of my mission to explain,” Miller replied.  “I undertook to come here and beg you to return at once.”  Tallente turned to Lady Jane.  “You will forgive me?” he begged.  “In any case, I must have been going in a few minutes.”

“I should forgive you even if you went without saying good-by,” she replied, “and I can assure you that I shall envy you.  I do not want to turn your head,” she went on pleasantly, as she walked by his side towards the door and across the hall, rather ignoring Miller, who followed behind, “but for the last two or three years the only political figures who have interested me at all have been Dartrey and yourself—­you as the man of action, and Dartrey as the most wonderful exponent of the real, higher Socialism.  I had a shelf made for his three books alone.  They hang in my bedroom and I look upon them as my textbooks.”

“I must tell Dartrey this,” Miller remarked from behind.  “I am sure he’ll be flattered.”

“What can he want with you?” Lady Jane asked, dropping her voice a little.

“I can’t tell,” Tallente confessed.  “His visit puzzles me.  He is the hermit of politics.  He seldom makes advances and has few friends.  He is, I believe, a man with the highest sense of honour.  Perhaps he has come to explain to me why they threw me out at Hellesfield.”

“In any case,” she said, as they stood for a moment on the step, “I feel that something exciting is going to happen.”