how very--is not that seven o'clock by the way? I think
that it is, and here is Fellows come to show you your room. You will
find that we have done our best for you in the matter of
clothes--guesswork, I fear, Kennedy, but still our best. To-morrow
Westman the tailor is to come--I think and hope you will put up with
borrowed plumes until he can fit you up. In the meantime, Fellows has
charge of your needs. I am sure that he will do his very best for you."

The young butler said that he would--his voice was still raised to a
little just dignity, and he, in company with Silas Geary, the
housekeeper and the servants' hall had already put the worst
construction possible upon Alban's reception into the house. His
determination to patronize the "young man" however received an abrupt
check when Alban suddenly ordered him to show the way upstairs. "He
spoke like a Duke," Fellows said in the kitchen afterwards. "There I was
running up the stairs just as though the Guv'ner were behind me. Don't
you think that you can come it easy with him--he ain't the sort by a
long way. I tell you, I never was so astonished since the Guv'ner raised
my wages."

Alban, of course, was sublimely unconscious of this. He had been
conducted to an enormous bedroom on the first floor, superbly furnished
with old Chippendale and excellent modern Sevres--and there he had been
left to realize for the first time that he was alone and that all which
had happened since yesterday was not a dream but a hard invincible truth
so full of meaning, so wonderful, so sure that the eyes of his brain did
not dare to look at it unflinchingly. Boyishly and with a boy's gesture
he had thrown himself upon the bed and hidden his face from the light as
though the very atmosphere of this wonder world were insupportable. Good
God, that it should have happened to him, Alban Kennedy; that it should
have been spoken of as his just right; that he should have been told
that he had a claim which none might refute! A hundred guesses afforded
no clue to the solution of the mystery. He could not tell himself that
he was in some way related to Richard Gessner, the banker; he could not
believe that his dead parents had any claim upon this foreigner who
received him coldly and yet would hear nothing of his departure. Pride
had little share in this, for the issues were momentous. It was
sufficient to know that a hand had suddenly drawn him from the abyss,
had put him on this pinnacle--beyo