, and there they walked for
half an hour amidst the showily dressed women on the lawn. Willy Forrest
was known to many of these and everywhere appeared sure of a familiar
welcome. The very men, who would tell you aside that he was a "wrong
'un," nodded affably to him and sometimes stopped to ask him what was
going to win the Oaks. He patronized a few pretty girls with
condescending recognition and immediately afterwards would relate to
Alban the more intimate and often scandalous stories of their families.
At a later moment they espied Anna herself in a superb victoria drawn by
two strawberry roans. And to their intense astonishment they perceived
that she had the Reverend Silas Geary in the carriage by her side.

"A clever little devil, upon my soul," said the Captain, ecstatically,
"to cart that fire-escape round and show him to the crowd. She must
have done it to annoy me--eh, what? She thinks I'm not so much an angel
as I look and is going to make me good. Oh, my stars--let's get. I shall
be saying the catechism if I stop here any longer."

CHAPTER XIII

ALBAN REVISITS UNION STREET

Alban escaped from the Sporting Club at a quarter to eleven, sick of its
fetid atmosphere and wearied by its mock brutalities. He made no
apologies for quitting Willy Forrest--for, truth to tell, that merry
worthy was no longer capable of understanding them. Frequent calls for
whisky-and-soda, added to a nice taste for champagne at dinner, left the
Captain in that maudlin condition in which a man is first cousin to all
the world--at once garrulous and effusive and generally undesirable.
Alban had, above all things, a contempt for a drunken man; and leaving
Forrest to the care of others of his kind, he went out into the street
and made his way slowly eastward.

It was an odd thing to recall; but he had hardly set foot east of the
Temple, he remembered, since the day when the bronze gates of Richard
Gessner's house first closed upon him and the vision of wonderland burst
upon his astonished eyes. The weeks had been those of unending kindness,
of gifts showered abundantly, of promises for the future which might
well overwhelm him by their generosity. Let him but consent to claim his
rights, Gessner had said, and every ambition should be gratified. No
other explanation than that of a lagging justice could he obtain--and no
other had he come to desire. If he remained at Hampstead, the image of
Anna Gessner, of a perfect womanhood