'Twenty years old to-day—twenty years!' murmured Alison, as she glanced at herself in the little mirror, and thought how pale and how much older than her age she looked in her plain black mourning dress, which was destitute of other ornament than smooth white cuffs and a ruche or frill of lace, or some such soft material, round her slender throat.
Vividly came back to the girl's memory her other birthdays, ere poverty fell upon her father, and ere she was—as now—alone in the world, and when each recurring anniversary found her loaded with caresses, congratulations, and pretty presents. And she could recall her fourth birthday at Essilmont, when she was a little child in a white embroidered frock, with a broad sash matching the colour of her dark blue eyes, with her brothers, Ranald and Ellon, eating strawberries off a huge salver held for them by Archie Auchindoir, who seemed an old Archie even then.
Never more would the kisses or caresses of father or mother touch her brow or cheek; and now she was in the ranks of those who have to earn their daily bread as a governess on thirty pounds per annum, teach French, English, and music to two little girls of the ages of nine and ten respectively.
And sadly on this day she thought of all that had befallen her, and how completely Bevil Goring had passed out of her life, apparently for ever! Wearily too her eye went round the bare school-room in that stately house in Pembridge Square, Bayswater—a long, low-ceiled apartment, with two windows that overlooked Westbourne Grove, a grove only in name now.
The vicar of Chilcote procured her this situation, and, beyond her name and his recommendation, her employer, Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, knew nothing of Alison Cheyne and cared not to inquire. The vicar had written lately to state that a handsome marble cross—a Celtic one he believed it was called—had lately been placed by a friend above her father's grave, and Alison's heart swelled with gratitude as she read of it.
It must have been done by Lord Cadbury, she thought. Who else could have done so?
She had now been two months in Pembridge Square—two whole months—and despite the unwonted drudgery of teaching, and the dreariness of routine—despite slights, almost insults, that were offered, perhaps unconsciously, by the cold-hearted and the underbred, the time had slipped quickly away.
Thus condemned to the dull drudgery of daily teaching a couple of troublesome, peevish, and ill-tempered brats in that bare and comfortless school-room, was Alison, a loving and passionate girl, made more passionate, loving, and tender by the sore griefs she had known, but all unsoured by these and the doubtful prospect—yea, the utter blank of her future.
Though the change of condition was not much to Alison, the change of position and that vacuity of the future were frightful to the poor girl; and in taking the situation for the sake of her father's name and his old family pride, though he was now in his grave, she had besought the vicar of Chilcote, in recommending her to Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, to conceal what she had ever been—nay, was still—the daughter of a baronet of Nova Scotia, whose diploma dated from 1625.
The family of Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns consisted of three daughters, the eldest Miss Victoria, of whom more anon, was in her nineteenth year, and Alison's two pupils, Irene and Iseulte. Like the rest of the snobocracy of the metropolis she believed in double names, thus she figured in the royal Blue-Book as Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, a style of address which would have astonished her late husband, worthy old David or D. Jobbyns, as he called himself, when for many a year he was acquiring wealth as an industrious soap-boiler in Bow East, and when he married pretty little Sally Slumpkins, the barmaid at the 'Black Swan' in Mile-End Road, and when she little foresaw how wealthy a 'relict' she would be left.