"Billy says the nag—what-d'yer-call-it's gone lame in the off fore-leg. She went down at the distance like a filly that's been hocussed. There were the two of us in the bally dust—and look at my fingers where I burned 'em with matches. After that a parson came along in a gig. I asked him if he had a whisky-and-soda aboard and he didn't quote the Scriptures. We couldn't get the blighter to move, and I ground the handle like Signor Gonedotti of Saffron Hill in the parish of High Holborn. You'd have laughed fit to split if you'd have been there, Anna—and, oh my Sammy, what a thing it is to have a thirst and to bring it home with you. Do I see myself before a mahogany one or do I not—eh, what? Do I dream, do I sleep, or is visions about? You'll put us up, of course, Anna? I've told Billy as much and he's shoving the car into the coach-house now."
He stalked across the room and without waiting to be asked helped himself to a whisky-and-soda. Anna looked quickly at Alban as though to say, "You must help me in this." Twenty-four hours ago she would not have protested at this man's intrusion, but to-night the glamor of the love-dream was still upon her, the idyll of her romance echoed in her ears and would admit no other voice.
"Willy," she said firmly, "you know that you cannot stop. My father would never forgive me. He has absolutely forbidden you the house."
He turned round, the glass still in his hand and the soda from the siphon running in a fountain over the table-cloth.
"Your father! He's in Paris, ain't he? Are we going to telegraph about it? What nonsense you are talking, Anna!"
"I am telling you what I mean. You cannot stop here and you must go to the hotel immediately."
He looked at her quite gravely, cast an ugly glance upon Alban and instantly understood.
"Oh, so that's the game. I've tumbled into the nest and the young birds are at home. Say it again, Anna. You show me the door because this young gentleman doesn't like my company. Is it that or something else? Perhaps I'll take it that the old girl upstairs is going to ask me my intentions. The sweet little Anna Gessner of my youth has got the megrims and is off to Miss Bolt-up-Right to have a good cry together—eh, what, are you going to cry, Anna? Hang me if you wouldn't give the crocodiles six pounds and a beating—eh, what, six pounds and a beating and odds on any day."
He approached her step by step as he spoke, while the girl's face blanched and her fear of him was to be read in every look and gesture. Alban had been but a spectator until this moment, but Anna's distress and the bullying tone in which she had been addressed awakened every combative instinct he possessed, and he thrust himself into the fray with a resolute determination to make an end of it.
"Look here, Forrest," he exclaimed, "we've had about enough of this. You know that you can't stop here—why do you make a fuss about it? Go over to the hotel. There's plenty of room there—they told me so this afternoon."