"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.