there is
generally some one staying here. I find it easy enough to persuade my
friends and some of my relatives that a corner of Exmoor is not half a
bad place in the spring and summer. It is through the winter that I am
generally avoided."

"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