ronage, "there is so much for you
to be thankful for to-day. Let us go and dream of it all. The reality
must be greater than anything we can imagine."

"I'll tell you in a week's time," said Alban, dryly.

A change had come upon him already. For Anna Gessner had betrayed her
secret, and he knew that she had a lover.

CHAPTER X

RICHARD GESSNER DEBATES AN ISSUE

Richard Gessner returned to "Five Gables" as the clock of Hampstead
Parish Church was striking one. A yawning footman met him in the hall
and asked him if he wished for anything. To the man's astonishment, he
was ordered to carry brandy and Vichy water to the bedroom immediately.

"To your room, sir?"

"To my room--are you deaf?"

"I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Gessner has returned."

"My daughter--when?"

"After dinner, sir."

"Was there any one with her?"

"I didn't rightly see, sir. Fellows opened the door--he could tell you,
sir."

Gessner cast a searching glance upon the man's face And then mounted the
great staircase with laborious steps. Passing the door of the room in
which Alban slept, he listened intently for a moment as though half of a
mind to enter; but abandoning the intention, went on to his apartment
and there, when the footman had attended to his requirements, he locked
the door and helped himself liberally to the brandy. An observer would
have remarked that drops of sweat stood upon his brow and that his hand
was shaking.

He had dined with a city company; but had dined as a man who knew
little of the dinner or of those who ate it. Ten days ago his energy,
his buoyant spirits, and his amazing vitality had astonished even his
best friends. To-night these qualities were at their lowest ebb--and he
had been so silent, so self-concentrated, so obviously distressed, that
even a casual acquaintance had remarked the change. To say that a just
Nemesis had overtaken him would be less than the truth. He knew that he
stood accused, not by a man, but by a nation. And to a nation he must
answer.

He locked the door of his room and, drawing a chair to a little Buhl
writing-table, set in the window, he opened a drawer and took therefrom
a little bundle of papers, upon which he had spent nine sleepless nights
and, apparently, would spend still another. They were odd scraps--now of
letters, now of legal documents--the _precis_ of a past which could be
recited in no court of justice, but might well be told aloud to an
unsympathetic wor