rawn, and has still a shekel or two in his
milk jug. My godfather!--but you are a lucky young man, and so you are
beginning to think, I suppose."

Alban did not condescend to answer a question so direct. He was still
quite uncertain as to his future, and he would not discuss it with this
irresponsible, who had undertaken to be his worldly mentor. When they
left the Savoy it was to visit a club in Trafalgar Square and there
discover the recumbent figures of aged gentlemen who had lunched not
wisely but too well. Of all that he had seen in the kingdoms of money,
Alban found this club least to his liking. The darkness of its great
rooms, the insolence of its members toward the servants who waited upon
them, the gross idleness, the trivial excitements of the card-room, the
secret drinking in remote corners--he had never imagined that men of
brains could so abase themselves, and he escaped ultimately to Hyde Park
with a measure of thankfulness he would not conceal.

"Why do people go to places like that, Forrest?" he asked as they went.
"What enjoyment do they get out of them?"

Willy Forrest, who had taken a "mahogany one" in the club and was
getting mighty confidential, answered him as candidly.

"Half of 'em go to get away from their wives, the other half to win
money--eh, what?"

"But why do they never speak to each other?"

"Put two game-cocks in a pen and then ask again. It's a club, my boy,
and so they think every other man a rogue or a fool."

"And do they pay much for the privilege?"

"That depends on the airs they give themselves. I've been pilled for
half the clubs in town and so, I suppose, I'm rather a decent sort of
chap. It used to be a kind of hall-mark to get in a good club, but we
live at hotels nowadays and don't care a dump for them. That's why half
of 'em are on the verge of bankruptcy. Don't you trouble about them,
unless you get a filly that bolts. I shall have to give up clubs
altogether, I suppose, when I marry Anna--eh, what?"

He laughed at the idea, and Alban remaining silent, he whistled a hansom
in a way that would have done credit to a railway porter, and continued
affably.

"You knew that I was going to marry Anna, didn't you? She told you on
the strict q.t., didn't she? Oh, my stars, how she can talk! I shall buy
an ear-trumpet when we're in double harness. But Anna told you, now
didn't she?"

"I have only once heard her mention your name--she certainly did not
speak of being en