There was kindness in a hospitality which opened to so strange a bird; admitting the kindness, Shelton fell to analysing it.  To himself, to people of his class, the use of kindness was a luxury, not significant of sacrifice, but productive of a pleasant feeling in the heart, such as massage will setup in the legs.  “Everybody’s kind,” he thought; “the question is, What understanding is there, what real sympathy?” This problem gave him food for thought.

The progress, which Mrs. Dennant not unfrequently remarked upon, in Ferrand’s conquest of his strange position, seemed to Shelton but a sign that he was getting what he could out of his sudden visit to green pastures; under the same circumstances, Shelton thought that he himself would do the same.  He felt that the young foreigner was making a convenient bow to property, but he had more respect for the sarcastic smile on the lips of Ferrand’s heart.

It was not long before the inevitable change came in the spirit of the situation; more and more was Shelton conscious of a quaint uneasiness in the very breathing of the household.

“Curious fellow you’ve got hold of there, Shelton,” Mr. Dennant said to him during a game of croquet; “he ’ll never do any good for himself, I’m afraid.”

“In one sense I’m afraid not,” admitted Shelton.

“Do you know his story?  I will bet you sixpence”—­and Mr. Dennant paused to swing his mallet with a proper accuracy “that he’s been in prison.”

“Prison!” ejaculated Shelton.

“I think,” said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his next shot, “that you ought to make inquiries—­ah! missed it!  Awkward these hoops!  One must draw the line somewhere.”

“I never could draw,” returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; “but I understand—­I ’ll give him a hint to go.”

“Don’t,” said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which Shelton had smitten to the farther end, “be offended, my dear Shelton, and by no means give him a hint; he interests me very much—­a very clever, quiet young fellow.”

That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr. Dennant’s manner in the presence of the vagabond.  Underlying the well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of his pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he was being laughed at.  What more natural than that he should grope about to see how this could be?  A vagrant alien was making himself felt by an English Justice of the Peace—­no small tribute, this, to Ferrand’s personality.  The latter would sit silent through a meal, and yet make his effect.  He, the object of their kindness, education, patronage, inspired their fear.  There was no longer any doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were afraid, but of what they did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties meandering in the brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of something bizarre popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided nose.