to these dreadful savages. I'm a woman, I know; but--I don't like
to hear you speak so about my England."

The words took Bertram fairly by surprise. He was wholly
unacquainted with that rank form of provincialism which we know as
patriotism. He leaned across towards her with a look of deep pain
on his handsome face.

"Oh, Mrs. Monteith," he cried earnestly, "if YOU don't like it,
I'll never again speak of them as taboos in your presence. I didn't
dream you could object. It seems so natural to us--well--to
describe like customs by like names in every case. But if it gives
you pain--why, sooner than do that, I'd never again say a single
word while I live about an English custom!"

His face was very near hers, and he was a son of Adam, like all the
rest of us--not a being of another sphere, as Frida was sometimes
half tempted to consider him. What might next have happened he
himself hardly knew, for he was an impulsive creature, and Frida's
rich lips were full and crimson, had not Philip's arrival with the
two Miss Hardys to make up a set diverted for the moment the
nascent possibility of a leading incident.






VI