For a day or two after this notable encounter between tabooer and
taboo-breaker, Philip moved about in a most uneasy state of mind.
He lived in constant dread of receiving a summons as a party to an
assault upon a most respectable and respected landed proprietor who
preserved more pheasants and owned more ruinous cottages than
anybody else (except the duke) round about Brackenhurst. Indeed, so
deeply did he regret his involuntary part in this painful escapade
that he never mentioned a word of it to Robert Monteith; nor did
Frida either. To say the truth, husband and wife were seldom
confidential one with the other. But, to Philip's surprise,
Bertram's prediction came true; they never heard another word about
the action for trespass or the threatened prosecution for assault
and battery. Sir Lionel found out that the person who had committed
the gross and unheard-of outrage of lifting an elderly and
respectable English landowner like a baby in arms on his own estate,
was a lodger at Brackenhurst, variously regarded by those who knew
him best as an escaped lunatic, and as a foreign nobleman in
disguise, fleeing for his life from a charge of complicity in a
Nihilist conspiracy: he wisely came to the conclusion, therefore,
that he would not be the first to divulge the story of his own
ignominious defeat, unless he found that damned radical chap was
going boasting around the countryside how he had balked Sir Lionel.
And as nothing was further than boasting from Bertram Ingledew's
gentle nature, and as Philip and Frida both held their peace for
good reasons of their own, the baronet never attempted in any way to
rake up the story of his grotesque disgrace on what he considered
his own property. All he did was to double the number of keepers
on the borders of his estate, and to give them strict notice that