“Not even brush and comb?” Philip interposed, horrified.

“Oh, yes, naturally, just the few things one always takes in a vade-mecum,” Bertram Ingledew answered, with a gracefully deprecatory wave of the hand, which Philip thought pretty enough, but extremely foreign.  “Beyond that, nothing.  I felt it would be best, you see, to set oneself up in things of the country in the country itself.  One’s surer then of getting exactly what’s worn in the society one mixes in.”

For the first and only time, as he said those words, the stranger struck a chord that was familiar to Philip.  “Oh, of course,” the Civil Servant answered, with brisk acquiescence, “if you want to be really up to date in your dress, you must go to first-rate houses in London for everything.  Nobody anywhere can cut like a good London tailor.”

Bertram Ingledew bowed his head.  It was the acquiescent bow of the utter outsider who gives no opinion at all on the subject under discussion, because he does not possess any.  As he probably came, in spite of his disclaimer, from America or the colonies, which are belated places, toiling in vain far in the rear of Bond Street, Philip thought this an exceedingly proper display of bashfulness, especially in a man who had only landed in England yesterday.  But Bertram went on half-musingly.  “And you had told me,” he said, “I’m sure not meaning to mislead me, there were no formalities or taboos of any kind on entering into lodgings.  However, I found, as soon as I’d arranged to take the rooms and pay four guineas a week for them, which was a guinea more than she asked me, Miss Blake would hardly let me come in at all unless I could at once produce my luggage.”  He looked comically puzzled.  “I thought at first,” he continued, gazing earnestly at Philip, “the good lady was afraid I wouldn’t pay her what I’d agreed, and would go away and leave her in the lurch without a penny,—­which was naturally a very painful imputation.  But when I offered to let her have three weeks’ rent in advance, I saw that wasn’t all:  there was a taboo as well; she couldn’t let me in without luggage, she said, because it would imperil some luck or talisman to which she frequently alluded as the Respectability of her Lodgings.  This Respectability seems a very great fetich.  I was obliged at last, in order to ensure a night’s lodging of any sort, to appease it by promising I’d go up to London by the first train to-day, and fetch down my luggage.”

“Then you’ve things at Charing Cross, in the cloak-room perhaps?” Philip suggested, somewhat relieved; for he felt sure Bertram Ingledew must have told Miss Blake it was he who had recommended him to Heathercliff House for furnished apartments.

“Oh, dear, no; nothing,” Bertram responded cheerfully.  “Not a sack to my back.  I’ve only what I stand up in.  And I called this morning just to ask as I passed if you could kindly direct me to an emporium in London where I could set myself up in all that’s necessary.”