The girl's face clouded perceptibly, and she loosened her cloak and threw it from her shoulders as though it had become an insupportable burden.
"If he calls to-morrow, I do not wish to see him. Please tell them all--I will not see him."
The butler smiled again, but answered, "Yes, miss."
Anna Gessner herself, still hesitating upon the threshold suddenly remembered another interest and referred to it with no less ardor.
"Oh, that reminds me, Fellows. Has my father spoken again of that dreadful silly business?"
"Concerning the young gentleman, miss?"
She heard him with unutterable contempt.
"The beggar-boy that he wishes to bring to this house. Did he speak of him to-night?"
Fellows came a step nearer and, hushing his voice, he said, with a servant's love of a dramatic reply: "Mr. Kennedy is in the garden now, miss--indeed, I think he's sitting near the vestibule."
She looked at him astonished. Ugly passions of disappointment and thwarted desire betrayed themselves in the swift turn and the angry pursing of her lips. Of her father's intentions in bringing this beggar-boy to the house, she knew nothing at all. It seemed to her one of those mad acts for which no sane apology could be offered.
"He is here now, Fellows! 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--"