lows! Who brought him then?"

"Mr. Geary--at six o'clock."

"Mr. Geary is a hateful busybody--I suppose I must speak to the boy."

"I think that Mr. Gessner would wish it, miss."

She hesitated a brief instant, her annoyance giving battle to her
father's well-known desire. Curiosity in the end helped her decision.
She must see the object of a charity so eccentric.

"You say that he is in the garden?" she continued, taking two steps
across the vestibule.

But this time Alban answered her himself.

"The beggar-boy is here," he said.

He had risen from his chair and the two confronted each other in the
aureole of light cast out from the open window. Just twenty-four hours
ago, Alban had been sitting by little Lois Boriskoff's side in the
second gallery at the Aldgate Empire. To-night he wore a suit of good
dress clothes, had dined at a millionaire's table and already recovered
much of that polish and confident manner which an English public school
rarely fails to bestow. Anna Gessner, in her turn, regarded him as
though he were the agent of a trick which had been played upon her. To
her amazement a hot flush of anger succeeded. She knew not how to meet
him or what excuses to make.

"My father has not told me the truth," she exclaimed presently. "I am
sorry that you overheard me--but I said what I meant. If he had told me
that you were coming--"

Alban stood before her quite unabashed. He understood the circumstances
and delighted in them.

"I am glad that you meant it," he rejoined, "of course, it is in some
way true. Those who have no money are always beggars to those who have.
Let me say that I don't know at all why I am here, and that I shall go
unless I find out. We need not quarrel about it at all."

Anna, however, had recovered her composure. Mistress of herself to a
remarkable degree when her passions were not aroused, she suddenly held
out her hand to Alban as though she would apologize--but not by the
spoken word.

"They have played a trick upon me," she cried. "I shall have it out with
Mr. Geary when he comes. Of course I am very sorry. My father said that
you were a distant relative, but he tried to frighten me by telling me
that you lived in Whitechapel and were working in a factory. I was silly
enough to believe it--you would have done so yourself."

"Most certainly--for it is quite true. I have been living in Whitechapel
since my mother died, and I worked in a factory until yesterday. If you