lady here, and I'm bound, as a man, to help her safely over."

Sir Lionel almost choked. "I see what you are," he gasped out with
difficulty. "I've heard this sort of rubbish more than once before.
You're one of these damned land-nationalising radicals."

"On the contrary," Bertram answered, urbane as ever, with charming
politeness of tone and manner: "I'm a born conservative. I'm
tenacious to an almost foolishly sentimental degree of every old
custom or practice or idea; unless, indeed, it's either wicked or
silly--like most of your English ones."

He raised his hat, and made as if he would pass on. Now, nothing
annoys an angry savage or an uneducated person so much as the
perfect coolness of a civilised and cultivated man when he himself
is boiling with indignation. He feels its superiority an affront on
his barbarism. So, with a vulgar oath, Sir Lionel flung himself
point-blank in the way. "Damn it all, no you won't, sir!" he cried.
"I'll soon put a stop to all that, I can tell you. You shan't go on
one step without committing an assault upon me." And he drew
himself up, four-square, as if for battle.

"Oh, just as you like," Bertram answered coolly, never losing his
temper. "I'm not afraid of taboos: I've seen too many of them."
And he gazed at the fat little angry man with a gentle expression
of mingled contempt and amusement.

For a minute, Frida thought they were really going to fight, and
drew back in horror to await the contest. But such a warlike notion
never entered the man of peace's head. He took a step backward for