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.”

“Oh, no,” Bertram replied, falling incautiously into the trap.  “We do right every day of the week alike,—­and never do poojah of any sort at any time.”

“Then where do you come from?” the Dean asked severely, pouncing down upon him like a hawk.  “I’ve always understood the very lowest savages have at least some outer form or shadow of religion.”

“Yes, perhaps so; but we’re not savages, either low or otherwise,” Bertram answered cautiously, perceiving his error.  “And as to your other point, for reasons of my own, I prefer for the present not to say where I come from.  You wouldn’t believe me, if I told you—­as you didn’t, I saw, about my remote connection with the Duke of East Anglia’s family.  And we’re not accustomed, where I live, to be disbelieved or doubted.  It’s perhaps the one thing that really almost makes us lose our tempers.  So, if you please, I won’t go any further at present into the debatable matter of my place of origin.”

He rose to stroll off into the gardens, having spoken all the time in that peculiarly grave and dignified tone that seemed natural to him whenever any one tried to question him closely.  Nobody save a churchman would have continued the discussion.  But the Dean was a churchman, and also a Scot, and he returned to the attack, unabashed and unbaffled.  “But surely, Mr. Ingledew,” he said in a persuasive voice, “your people, whoever they are, must at least acknowledge a creator of the universe.”

Bertram gazed at him fixedly.  His eye was stern.  “My people, sir,” he said slowly, in very measured words, unaware that one must not argue with a clergyman, “acknowledge and investigate every reality they can find in the universe—­and admit no phantoms.  They believe in everything that can be shown or proved to be natural and true; but in nothing supernatural, that is to say, imaginary or non-existent.  They accept plain facts:  they reject pure phantasies.  How beautiful those lilies are, Mrs. Monteith! such an exquisite colour!  Shall we go over and look at them?”

“Not just now,” Frida answered, relieved at the appearance of Martha with the tray in the distance.  “Here’s tea coming.”  She was glad of the diversion, for she liked Bertram immensely, and she could not help noticing how hopelessly he had been floundering all that afternoon right into the very midst of what he himself would have called their taboos and joss-business.