Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

"Willy," she said firmly, "you know that you cannot stop. My father would never forgive me. He has absolutely forbidden you the house."

He turned round, the glass still in his hand and the soda from the siphon running in a fountain over the table-cloth.

"Your father! He's in Paris, ain't he? Are we going to telegraph about it? What nonsense you are talking, Anna!"

"I am telling you what I mean. You cannot stop here and you must go to the hotel immediately."

He looked at her quite gravely, cast an ugly glance upon Alban and instantly understood.

"Oh, so that's the game. I've tumbled into the nest and the young birds are at home. Say it again, Anna. You show me the door because this young gentleman doesn't like my company. Is it that or something else? Perhaps I'll take it that the old girl upstairs is going to ask me my intentions. The sweet little Anna Gessner of my youth has got the megrims and is off to Miss Bolt-up-Right to have a good cry together--eh, what, are you going to cry, Anna? Hang me if you wouldn't give the crocodiles six pounds and a beating--eh, what, six pounds and a beating and odds on any day."

He approached her step by step as he spoke, while the girl's face blanched and her fear of him was to be read in every look and gesture. Alban had been but a spectator until this moment, but Anna's distress and the bullying tone in which she had been addressed awakened every combative instinct he possessed, and he thrust himself into the fray with a resolute determination to make an end of it.

"Look here, Forrest," he exclaimed, "we've had about enough of this. You know that you can't stop here--why do you make a fuss about it? Go over to the hotel. There's plenty of room there--they told me so this afternoon."

Forrest laughed at the invitation, but there was more than laughter in his voice when he replied: "Thank you for your good intentions, my boy. I am very much obliged to your worship. A top-floor attic and a marble bath. Eh, what--you want to put me in a garret? I'll see you the other side of Jordan first. Oh, come, it's a nice game, isn't it? Papa away and little Anna canoodling with the Whitechapel boy. Are we downhearted? No. But I ain't going, old pal, and that's a fact."

He almost fell into an arm-chair and looked upon them with that bland air of patronage which intoxication inspires. Anna, very pale and frightened, was upon the point of summoning the servants; but Alban, wiser in his turn, forbade her to do so.