“You seem,” Jeanne remarked, after listening to him almost in silence for a long time, “to give most of your time to sports.  Do you play polo?”

He shook his head.

“I am too heavy,” he said, “and the game, it is a little dangerous.”

“Do you hunt?” she asked.

“No!” he admitted.  “In Belgium we do not hunt.”

“Do you race with your motor cars?”

“I entered one,” he answered, “for the Prix des Ardennes.  It was the third.  My driver, he was not very clever.”

“You did not drive it yourself, then?” she asked.

He laughed in a superior manner.

“I do not wish,” he said, “to have a broken neck.  There are so many things in life which I still find very pleasant.”

He smiled at her in a knowing manner, and Jeanne looked away to hide her disgust.

“Your interest in sport,” she remarked, “seems to be a sort of second-hand one, does it not?”

“I do not know that,” he answered.  “I do not know quite what you mean.  At Ostend last year I won the great sweepstakes.”

“For shooting pigeons?” she asked.

“So!” he admitted, with content.

She smiled.

“I see that I must beg your pardon,” she said.  “Have you ever done any big game shooting?”

He shook his head.

“I do not like to travel very much,” he answered.  “I do not like the cooking, and I think that my tastes are what you would call very civilized.”

The Princess intervened.  She felt that it was necessary at any cost to do so.

“The Count,” she told Jeanne, “has just been elected a member of the Four-in-Hand Club here.  If we are very nice to him he will take us out in his coach.”

“As soon,” De Brensault interposed hastily, “as I have found another team not quite so what you call spirited.  My black horses are very beautiful, but I do not like to drive them.  They pull very hard, and they always try to run away.”

The Princess sighed.  The man, after all, was really a little hopeless.  She saw clearly that it was useless to try and impress Jeanne.  The affair must take its course.  Afterwards in the drawing-room the Count came and sat by Jeanne’s side.

“Always,” he declared, “in England it is bridge.  One dines with one’s friends, and one would like to talk for a little time, and it is bridge.  It must be very dull for you little girls who are not old enough to play.  There is no one left to talk to you.”

Jeanne smiled.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I am an exception.  There are very few people whom I care to have talk to me.”

She looked him in the eyes, but he was unfortunately a very spoilt young man, and he only stroked the waxed tip of a scanty moustache.

“I am very glad to hear you say so, mademoiselle,” he said.  “That makes it the more pleasant that your excellent mother gives me one quarter of an hour’s respite from bridge that we may have a little conversation.  Have you ever been in my country, Miss Le Mesurier?”