f etiquette--say rather of morals--whether one ought or ought not to
introduce "the ladies of one's family" to a casual stranger picked up
in the street, who confesses he has come on a visit to England without
a letter of introduction or even that irreducible minimum of
respectability--a portmanteau. Frida, however, had no such scruples. She
saw the young man was good-looking and gentlemanly, and she turned to
Philip with the hasty sort of glance that says as plainly as words could
say it, "Now, then! introduce me."

Thus mutely exhorted, though with a visible effort, Philip murmured half
inarticulately, in a stifled undertone, "My sister, Mrs. Monteith--Mr.
Bertram Ingledew," and then trembled inwardly.

It was a surprise to Bertram that the beautiful woman with the soul in
her eyes should turn out to be the sister of the very commonplace young
man with the boiled-fish expression he had met by the corner; but he
disguised his astonishment, and only interjected, as if it were the most
natural remark in the world: "I'm pleased to meet you. What a lovely
gown! and how admirably it becomes you!"

Philip opened his eyes aghast. But Frida glanced down at the dress with
a glance of approbation. The stranger's frankness, though quaint, was
really refreshing.

"I'm so glad you like it," she said, taking the compliment with quiet
dignity, as simply as it was intended. "It's all my own taste; I chose
the stuff and designed the make of it. And I know who this is, Phil,
without your troubling to tell me; it's the gentleman you met in the
street last night, and were talking about at dinner."

"You're quite right," Philip answered, with a deprecating look (as who
should say, aside, "I really couldn't help it"). "He--he's rather in a
difficulty." And then he went on to explain in a few hurried words
to Frida, with sundry shrugs and nods of profoundest import, that the
supposed lunatic or murderer or foreigner or fool had gone to Miss
Blake's without luggage of any sort; and that, "Perhaps"--very
dubitatively--"a portmanteau or bag might help him out of his temporary
difficulties."

"Why, of course," Frida cried impulsively, with prompt decision;
"Robert's Gladstone bag and my little brown trunk would be the very
things for him. I could lend them to him at once, if only we can get a
Sunday cab to take them."

"NOT before service, surely," Philip interposed, scandalised. "If he
were to take them now, you know, he'd meet all the