"It was perfect simplicity and naturalness," Frida answered with
confidence. "He looked at the dress, and admired it, and being
transparently naif, he didn't see why he shouldn't say so. It
wasn't at all rude, I thought--and it gave me pleasure."

"He certainly has in some ways charming manners," Philip went on
more slowly. "He manages to impress one. If he's a madman, which
I rather more than half suspect, it's at least a gentlemanly form
of madness."

"His manners are more than merely charming," Frida answered, quite
enthusiastic, for she had taken a great fancy at first sight to the
mysterious stranger. "They've such absolute freedom. That's what
strikes me most in them. They're like the best English aristocratic
manners, without the insolence; or the freest American manners,
without the roughness. He's extremely distinguished. And, oh,
isn't he handsome!"

"He IS good-looking," Philip assented grudgingly. Philip owned a
looking-glass, and was therefore accustomed to a very high
standard of manly beauty.

As for Robert Monteith, he smiled the grim smile of the wholly
unfascinated. He was a dour business man of Scotch descent, who
had made his money in palm-oil in the City of London; and having
married Frida as a remarkably fine woman, with a splendid figure,
to preside at his table, he had very small sympathy with what he
considered her high-flown fads and nonsensical fancies. He had seen
but little of the stranger, too, having come in from his weekly
stroll, or tour of inspection, round the garden and stables, just