In time the two grew quite intimate together.  But on one point Bertram would never give his new friend the slightest information; and that was the whereabouts of that mysterious “home” he so often referred to.  Oddly enough, no one ever questioned him closely on the subject.  A certain singular reserve of his, which alternated curiously with his perfect frankness, prevented them from trespassing so far on his individuality.  People felt they must not.  Somehow, when Bertram Ingledew let it once be felt he did not wish to be questioned on any particular point, even women managed to restrain their curiosity:  and he would have been either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue questioning him any further.  So, though many people hazarded guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the point-blank question:  Who are you, if you please, and what do you want here?

The Alien went out a great deal with the Monteiths.  Robert himself did not like the fellow, he said:  one never quite knew what the deuce he was driving at; but Frida found him always more and more charming,—­so full of information!—­while Philip admitted he was excellent form, and such a capital tennis player!  So whenever Philip had a day off in the country, they three went out in the fields together, and Frida at least thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the freedom and freshness of the newcomer’s conversation.

On one such day they went out, as it chanced, into the meadows that stretch up the hill behind Brackenhurst.  Frida remembered it well afterwards.  It was the day when an annual saturnalia of vulgar vice usurps and pollutes the open downs at Epsom.  Bertram did not care to see it, he said—­the rabble of a great town turned loose to desecrate the open face of nature—­even regarded as a matter of popular custom; he had looked on at much the same orgies before in New Guinea and on the Zambesi, and they only depressed him:  so he stopped at Brackenhurst, and went for a walk instead in the fresh summer meadows.  Robert Monteith, for his part, had gone to the Derby—­so they call that orgy—­and Philip had meant to accompany him in the dogcart, but remained behind at the last moment to take care of Frida; for Frida, being a lady at heart, always shrank from the pollution of vulgar assemblies.  As they walked together across the lush green fields, thick with campion and yellow-rattle, they came to a dense copse with a rustic gate, above which a threatening notice-board frowned them straight in the face, bearing the usual selfish and anti-social inscription, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”

“Let’s go in here and pick orchids,” Bertram suggested, leaning over the gate.  “Just see how pretty they are!  The scented white butterfly!  It loves moist bogland.  Now, Mrs. Monteith, wouldn’t a few long sprays of that lovely thing look charming on your dinner-table?”

“But it’s preserved,” Philip interposed with an awestruck face.  “You can’t go in there:  it’s Sir Lionel Longden’s, and he’s awfully particular.”