sn't from the Bertrams. Old
Ingledew's daughters are pretty enough girls. If their aunts were like
'em, it's there your young friend got his air of distinction."

"We never know who's who nowadays," the Dean murmured softly. Being
himself the son of a small Scotch tradesman, brought up in the Free
Kirk, and elevated into his present exalted position by the early
intervention of a Balliol scholarship and a studentship of Christ
Church, he felt at liberty to moralise in such non-committing terms on
the gradual decay of aristocratic exclusiveness.

"I don't see it much matters what a man's family was," the General said
stoutly, "so long as he's a fine, well-made, soldierly fellow, like this
Ingledew body, capable of fighting for his Queen and country. He's an
Australian, I suppose. What tall chaps they do send home, to be sure!
Those Australians are going to lick us all round the field presently."

"That's the curious part of it," Philip answered. "Nobody knows what he
is. He doesn't even seem to be a British subject. He calls himself an
Alien. And he speaks most disrespectfully at times--well, not exactly
perhaps of the Queen in person, but at any rate of the monarchy."

"Utterly destitute of any feeling of respect for any power of any sort,
human or divine," the Dean remarked, with clerical severity.

"For my part," Monteith interposed, knocking his ash off savagely, "I
think the man's a swindler; and the more I see of him, the less I like
him. He's never explained to us how he came here at all, or what the
dickens he came for. He refuses to say where he lives or what's his
nationality. He poses as a sort of unexplained Caspar Hauser. In my
opinion, these mystery men are always impostors. He had no letters of
introduction to anybody at Brackenhurst; and he thrust himself upon
Philip in a most peculiar way; ever since which he's insisted upon
coming to my house almost daily. I don't like him myself: it's Mrs.
Monteith who insists upon having him here."

"He fascinates me," the General said frankly. "I don't at all wonder the
women like him. As long as he was by, though I don't agree with one word
he says, I couldn't help looking at him and listening to him intently."

"So he does me," Philip answered, since the General gave him the cue.
"And I notice it's the same with people in the train. They always listen
to him, though sometimes he preaches the most extravagant doctrines--oh,
much worse than anything he's said h