gesture. This affected Philip
favourably: the newcomer was a somebody then, and knew his place: for
just in proportion as Philip felt afraid to begin conversation himself
with an unplaced stranger, did he respect any other man who felt so
perfectly sure of his own position that he shared no such middle-class
doubts or misgivings. A duke is never afraid of accosting anybody.
Philip was strengthened, therefore, in his first idea, that the man
in the grey suit was a person of no small distinction in society, else
surely he would not have come up and spoken with such engaging frankness
and ease of manner.

"I beg your pardon," the stranger said, addressing him in pure and
limpid English, which sounded to Philip like the dialect of the very
best circles, yet with some nameless difference of intonation or accent
which certainly was not foreign, still less provincial, or Scotch, or
Irish; it seemed rather like the very purest well of English undefiled
Philip had ever heard,--only, if anything, a little more so; "I beg
your pardon, but I'm a stranger hereabouts, and I should be so VERY much
obliged if you could kindly direct me to any good lodgings."

His voice and accent attracted Philip even more now he stood near
at hand than his appearance had done from a little distance. It was
impossible, indeed, to say definitely in set terms what there was about
the man that made his personality and his words so charming; but from
that very first minute, Philip freely admitted to himself that the
stranger in the grey suit was a perfect gentleman. Nay, so much did he
feel it in his ingenuous way that he threw off at once his accustomed
cloak of dubious reserve, and, standing still to think, answered after a
short pause, "Well, we've a great many very nice furnished houses about
here to let, but not many lodgings. Brackenhurst's a cut above lodgings,
don't you know; it's a residential quarter. But I should think Miss
Blake's, at Heathercliff House, would perhaps be just the sort of thing
to suit you."

"Oh, thank you," the stranger answered, with a deferential politeness
which charmed Philip once more by its graceful expressiveness. "And
could you kindly direct me to them? I don't know my way about at all,
you see, as yet, in this country."

"With pleasure," Philip replied, quite delighted at the chance of
solving the mystery of where the stranger had dropped from. "I'm going
that way myself, and can take you past her door. It's only