He rose from the bed at length, and trying to put every thought but that of the moment from his head, he remembered that he was expected to dine alone in the great room below, and to dress himself for such an ordeal in the clothes which the reverend gentleman's wit had provided for him. Courageous in all things, he found himself not a little afraid of all the beautiful objects which he touched, afraid to lift the Sèvres pitcher, afraid to open the long doors of the inlaid wardrobe, timid before the dazzling mirror--a reluctant guest who, for the time being, would have been thankful to escape to a carpetless floor and glad to wash in a basin of the commonest kind. When this passed, and it was but momentary, the delusion that a trick was being played upon him succeeded to it and he stood to ask himself if he had not been a fool to believe their story at all, a fool thus to be made sport of by one who would relate the circumstance with relish to-morrow. This piece of nonsense, however, was as quick to give way to the somewhat cynical common sense with which, Alban Kennedy had rightly been credited as the other. He turned from it impatiently and began to dress himself. He had last dressed in black clothes and a white waistcoat for a school concert at Westminster when he was quite a little lad--but his youth had taught him the conventions, and he had never forgotten those traditions of what his dead father used to call the "decent life." In his case the experience was but a reversion to the primitive, and he dressed with every satisfaction, delighted to put off the shabby old clothes and no less content with his new appearance as a mirror revealed it to him.
The dining room at "Five Gables" was normally a little dark in the daytime, for it looked upon the drive where ancient trees shaded its lofty latticed windows. At night, however, Richard Gessner's fine silver set off the veritable black oak to perfection, and the room had an air of dignity and richness neither artificial nor offensive. When Alban came down to dinner he perceived that a cover had been set for him at the end of a vast table, and that he was expected to take the absent master's place; nor could he forbear to smile at the solemn exercises performed by Fellows the young butler, and two footmen who were to wait upon him. These rascals, whatever they might say in the kitchen afterwards, served him at the table as though he had been an eldest son of the house. If they had expected that the ragged, shabby fellow, who entered the house so stealthily an hour ago, would provide food for their exquisitely delicate sense of humor, they were wofully disappointed. Alban ate his dinner without uttering a single remark.