Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

Boriskoff did not permit him to finish.

"My daughter will be educated in Germany at your cost," he said curtly. "I would speak first of one who is as a son to me because of her affection for him. There is a young Englishman living in Union Street, the son of a poor clergyman who died in the service of the poor. This lad you will take into your own house and treat as your own son. It is my desire and must be gratified. Remember that he is the son of a gentleman and treat him as such. There will be time enough afterwards to tell you how you must act in the interests of our people at Warsaw. This affair is our own and not of politics at all. As God is in heaven, but for my daughter you, Maxim Gogol, would not be alive this night."

Gessner's heart sank again at the hint of further requests subsequently to come. The suggestion that he should adopt into his own house a youth of whom he knew nothing seemed in keeping with the circumstances of this dread encounter and the penalty that must be paid for it. After all, it was but a small price to pay for comparative security and the silence of a tongue which could work such ill. Accustomed to deal with men of all natures, honest and simple, clever and foolish, secretive and loquacious, there ran in his mind the desperate idea that he would temporize with Paul Boriskoff and ultimately destroy him. Let the Russian Government be informed of the activity of this Pole and of his intention to visit the Continent of Europe again, and what were Boriskoff's chances? Such were the treacherous thoughts which stood in Gessner's mind while he framed an answer which should avert the final hour of reckoning and give him that opportunity for the counter-stroke which might yet save all.

"Your youth will profit little in my house," he said with some pretense of earnestness. "Had you asked an education abroad for him, that would have been a wiser thing in these days. Frankly, I do not understand your motive, but I am none the less willing to humor it. Let me know something more of the lad, let me have his history and then I shall be able to say what is the best course. I live a very quiet life and my daughter is much away. There is the possibility also that the boy, if he be the son of a clergyman, would do much better at Oxford or at Cambridge than at Hampstead, as you yourself must see. Let us speak of it afterwards. There will be time enough."