as of the Best Society, that surprised and astonished him;
Brackenhurst prided itself, indeed, on being a most well-bred and
distinguished neighbourhood; people of note grew as thick there as
heather or whortleberries. What puzzled him more was the abstruser
question, where on earth the stranger could have come from so
suddenly. Philip had glanced up the road and down the road just two
minutes before, and was prepared to swear when he withdrew his eyes
not a soul loomed in sight in either direction. Whence, then, could
the man in the grey suit have emerged? Had he dropped from the
clouds? No gate opened into the road on either side for two hundred
yards or more; for Brackenhurst is one of those extremely
respectable villa neighbourhoods where every house--an eligible
family residence--stands in its own grounds of at least six acres.
Now Philip could hardly suspect that so well dressed a man of such
distinguished exterior would be guilty of such a gross breach of
the recognised code of Brackenhurstian manners as was implied in
the act of vaulting over a hedgerow. So he gazed in blank wonder
at the suddenness of the apparition, more than half inclined to
satisfy his curiosity by inquiring of the stranger how the dickens
he had got there.

A moment's reflection, however, sufficed to save the ingenuous
young man from the pitfall of so serious a social solecism. It
would be fatal to accost him. For, mark you, no matter how
gentlemanly and well-tailored a stranger may look, you can never be
sure nowadays (in these topsy-turvy times of subversive radicalism)
whether he is or is not really a gentleman. That makes
acquaintanceship a dangerous luxury. If you begin by talking to a
man, be it ever so casually, he may desire to thrust his company
upon you, willy-nilly, in future; and when you have ladies of your