a lodge. M. Nicholas Kinaitsky evidently kept
up an extensive establishment. There seemed a round dozen of servants.
Two men and a boy were out in the grounds preparing the roses for the
winter. A blue spiral of smoke was blowing away from the chimney of the
hothouse against the north wall. And the house itself was one of those
spacious and perfectly decorous affairs which have become identified
with that extraordinary colony of wealthy aliens who make a specialty of
being more English than the English. There was a tennis-court on one
side of the house and a young man with a dark, clean-shaven face stood
talking to a girl, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched in
what one may call the public-school manner, the coat of arms of an
ancient Oxford college glowing on the breast of his blue blazer. And
indoors the same influence obtained. The pictures and books and
furniture presented a front of impregnable insularity. Even the piano
was English. Only a photograph in a frame of silver gilt, on a side
table, gave a hint--the portrait of a lady with hair dressed in the
style of German princesses of Queen Victoria's day, the sinuous curve of
her high, tight bodice accented by the great bustle. I noted all this,
and sat looking out of the window, which gave upon the autumn splendour
of the Heath. There was a pond close by, and an old gentleman in white
spats was stooping down to launch a large model yacht on the water. A
fairly well-to-do old gentleman, by the gold coins on his watch-chain
and the rings which sparkled on his hands. I wondered if he were a
relative of the Kinaitskys or whether he only knew them. The yacht
started off under a press of canvas, and the old gentleman set off at a
trot round the edge, to meet it. I doubt if you could have seen a sight
like that anywhere else in the world. He was perfectly unconscious of
doing anything at all out of the common. And I dare say it is essential
to the rounded completeness of English life that funny and wealthy old
gentlemen should sail toy yachts on ponds, while cultured aliens amass
fortunes on the Stock Exchange and some of us plow the ocean all our
lives.

"And then I was disturbed in my musings by a young lady entering the
room, and I rose to explain myself.

"I say she was a young lady, while you will observe I alluded only just
now to a girl talking to a young man on the tennis-court. There was that
difference. Without giving one any reason for supposing s