Guided by these truly British principles of ancestral wisdom, Philip Christy would probably never have seen anything more of the distinguished-looking stranger had it not been for a passing accident of muscular action, over which his control was distinctly precarious.  He happened in brushing past to catch the stranger’s eye.  It was a clear blue eye, very deep and truthful.  It somehow succeeded in riveting for a second Philip’s attention.  And it was plain the stranger was less afraid of speaking than Philip himself was.  For he advanced with a pleasant smile on his open countenance, and waved one gloveless hand in a sort of impalpable or half-checked salute, which impressed his new acquaintance as a vaguely polite Continental gesture.  This affected Philip favourably:  the newcomer was a somebody then, and knew his place:  for just in proportion as Philip felt afraid to begin conversation himself with an unplaced stranger, did he respect any other man who felt so perfectly sure of his own position that he shared no such middle-class doubts or misgivings.  A duke is never afraid of accosting anybody.  Philip was strengthened, therefore, in his first idea, that the man in the grey suit was a person of no small distinction in society, else surely he would not have come up and spoken with such engaging frankness and ease of manner.

“I beg your pardon,” the stranger said, addressing him in pure and limpid English, which sounded to Philip like the dialect of the very best circles, yet with some nameless difference of intonation or accent which certainly was not foreign, still less provincial, or Scotch, or Irish; it seemed rather like the very purest well of English undefiled Philip had ever heard,—­only, if anything, a little more so; “I beg your pardon, but I’m a stranger hereabouts, and I should be so very much obliged if you could kindly direct me to any good lodgings.”

His voice and accent attracted Philip even more now he stood near at hand than his appearance had done from a little distance.  It was impossible, indeed, to say definitely in set terms what there was about the man that made his personality and his words so charming; but from that very first minute, Philip freely admitted to himself that the stranger in the grey suit was a perfect gentleman.  Nay, so much did he feel it in his ingenuous way that he threw off at once his accustomed cloak of dubious reserve, and, standing still to think, answered after a short pause, “Well, we’ve a great many very nice furnished houses about here to let, but not many lodgings.  Brackenhurst’s a cut above lodgings, don’t you know; it’s a residential quarter.  But I should think Miss Blake’s, at Heathercliff House, would perhaps be just the sort of thing to suit you.”

“Oh, thank you,” the stranger answered, with a deferential politeness which charmed Philip once more by its graceful expressiveness.  “And could you kindly direct me to them?  I don’t know my way about at all, you see, as yet, in this country.”