connection with the present man or his predecessor?"

"Oh, don't, please," Bertram put in, half-pleadingly, it is true,
but still with that same ineffable and indefinable air of a great
gentleman that never for a moment deserted him. "The duke would
never have heard of my ancestors, I'm sure, and I particularly
don't want to be mixed up with the existing Bertrams in any way."

He was happily innocent and ignorant of the natural interpretation
the others would put upon his reticence, after the true English
manner; but still he was vaguely aware, from the silence that
ensued for a moment after he ceased, that he must have broken once
more some important taboo, or offended once more some much-revered
fetich. To get rid of the awkwardness he turned quietly to Frida.
"What do you say, Mrs. Monteith," he suggested, "to a game of
tennis?"

As bad luck would have it, he had floundered from one taboo
headlong into another. The Dean looked up, open-mouthed, with a
sharp glance of inquiry. Did Mrs. Monteith, then, permit such
frivolities on the Sunday? "You forget what day it is, I think,"
Frida interposed gently, with a look of warning.

Bertram took the hint at once. "So I did," he answered quickly.
"At home, you see, we let no man judge us of days and of weeks, and
of times and of seasons. It puzzles us so much. With us, what's
wrong to-day can never be right and proper to-morrow."

"But surely," the Dean said, bristling up, "some day is set apart
in every civilised land for religious exercises."