affect me; yet I'm obliged to refrain, because I know my words
could do no good and might do harm, for they could only anger them.
My sole hope of doing anything to mitigate the rigour of your cruel
customs is to take as little notice of them as possible in any way
whenever I find myself in unsympathetic society."

"Then you don't think ME unsympathetic?" Frida murmured, with a
glow of pleasure.

"O Frida," the young man cried, bending forward and looking at her,
"you know very well you're the only person here I care for in the
least or have the slightest sympathy with."

Frida was pleased he should say so; he was so nice and gentle: but
she felt constrained none the less to protest, for form's sake at
least, against his calling her once more so familiarly by her
Christian name. "NOT Frida to you, if you please, Mr. Ingledew,"
she said as stiffly as she could manage. "You know it isn't right.
Mrs. Monteith, you must call me." But she wasn't as angry, somehow,
at the liberty he had taken as she would have been in anybody
else's case; he was so very peculiar.

Bertram Ingledew paused and checked himself.

"You think I do it on purpose," he said with an apologetic air; "I
know you do, of course; but I assure you I don't. It's all pure
forgetfulness. The fact is, nobody can possibly call to mind all
the intricacies of your English and European customs at once,
unless he's to the manner born, and carefully brought up to them
from his earliest childhood, as all of you yourselves have been.