nd all, had placed him in Anna
Gessner's home as the first-born, there to embark upon a career whose
goal lay beyond the City Beautiful of his dreams.

He rose from the bed at length, and trying to put every thought but that
of the moment from his head, he remembered that he was expected to dine
alone in the great room below, and to dress himself for such an ordeal
in the clothes which the reverend gentleman's wit had provided for him.
Courageous in all things, he found himself not a little afraid of all
the beautiful objects which he touched, afraid to lift the Sevres
pitcher, afraid to open the long doors of the inlaid wardrobe, timid
before the dazzling mirror--a reluctant guest who, for the time being,
would have been thankful to escape to a carpetless floor and glad to
wash in a basin of the commonest kind. When this passed, and it was but
momentary, the delusion that a trick was being played upon him succeeded
to it and he stood to ask himself if he had not been a fool to believe
their story at all, a fool thus to be made sport of by one who would
relate the circumstance with relish to-morrow. This piece of nonsense,
however, was as quick to give way to the somewhat cynical common sense
with which, Alban Kennedy had rightly been credited as the other. He
turned from it impatiently and began to dress himself. He had last
dressed in black clothes and a white waistcoat for a school concert at
Westminster when he was quite a little lad--but his youth had taught him
the conventions, and he had never forgotten those traditions of what his
dead father used to call the "decent life." In his case the experience
was but a reversion to the primitive, and he dressed with every
satisfaction, delighted to put off the shabby old clothes and no less
content with his new appearance as a mirror revealed it to him.

The dining room at "Five Gables" was normally a little dark in the
daytime, for it looked upon the drive where ancient trees shaded its
lofty latticed windows. At night, however, Richard Gessner's fine silver
set off the veritable black oak to perfection, and the room had an air
of dignity and richness neither artificial nor offensive. When Alban
came down to dinner he perceived that a cover had been set for him at
the end of a vast table, and that he was expected to take the absent
master's place; nor could he forbear to smile at the solemn exercises
performed by Fellows the young butler, and two footmen who were to wai