riously that
after a time Frida, who was just at first inclined to laugh at his
odd way of putting things, began to take it all in the end quite as
seriously as he did. He felt more at home with her than with anybody
else at Brackenhurst. She had sympathetic eyes; and he lived on
sympathy. He came to her so often for help in his difficulties that she
soon saw he really meant all he said, and was genuinely puzzled in a
very queer way by many varied aspects of English society.

In time the two grew quite intimate together. But on one point Bertram
would never give his new friend the slightest information; and that was
the whereabouts of that mysterious "home" he so often referred to. Oddly
enough, no one ever questioned him closely on the subject. A certain
singular reserve of his, which alternated curiously with his perfect
frankness, prevented them from trespassing so far on his individuality.
People felt they must not. Somehow, when Bertram Ingledew let it once
be felt he did not wish to be questioned on any particular point, even
women managed to restrain their curiosity: and he would have been
either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to
continue questioning him any further. So, though many people hazarded
guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the
point-blank question: Who are you, if you please, and what do you want
here?

The Alien went out a great deal with the Monteiths. Robert himself did
not like the fellow, he said: one never quite knew what the deuce he was
driving at; but Frida found him always more and more charming,--so full
of information!--while Philip admitted he was excellent form, and such a
capital tennis player! So whenever Philip had a day off in the
country, they three went out in the fields together, and Frida at least
thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the freedom and freshness of the
newcomer's conversation.

On one such day they went out, as it chanced, into the meadows that
stretch up the hill behind Brackenhurst. Frida remembered it well
afterwards. It was the day when an annual saturnalia of vulgar vice
usurps and pollutes the open downs at Epsom. Bertram did not care to see
it, he said--the rabble of a great town turned loose to desecrate the
open face of nature--even regarded as a matter of popular custom; he
had looked on at much the same orgies before in New Guinea and on the
Zambesi, and they only depressed him: so he stopped at Brack