"But why not?" she persisted.
John laughed a little.
"Well, really," he admitted, "when I come to think of it seriously, I scarcely know. I have lived alone with an elder brother, who hates London and would be very unhappy if I got into the way of coming up regularly. I fancy that I have rather grown into his way of thinking. I am quite satisfied—or rather I have been quite satisfied—to live down there all the year round."
"I have never heard anything so extraordinary in my life!" the woman declared frankly. "Is it the prince who has induced you to break out of your seclusion?"
"Our young friend," the prince explained, "finds himself suddenly in altered circumstances. He has been left a large fortune, and has come to spend it. Incidentally, I hope, he has come to see something more of your sex than is possible among his mountain wilds. He has come, in short, to look a little way into life."
Lady Hilda leaned back in her chair.
"How romantic!"
"The prince amuses himself," John assured her. "I don't suppose I shall stay very long in London. I want just to try it for a time."
She looked at him almost wistfully. She was a woman with brains; a woman notorious for the freedom of her life, for her intellectual gifts, for her almost brutal disregard of the conventions of her class. The psychological interest of John Strangewey's situation appealed to her powerfully. Besides, she had a weakness for handsome men.
"Of course, it all sounds like a fairy tale," she declared. "Tell me exactly, please, how long you have been in London."