'You have had private trouble, I suppose?'
Alison was silent.
'Tell me,' continued the irrepressible Miss De Jobbyns, 'have you ever been in love?'
'In truth—I have been.'
'And your young man—he is dead, too, I suppose?'
'He I refer to is dead, at least, to me,' replied Alison, wearily; 'but here come my pupils, so please to let me resume their tasks.'
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB.
One of the chief, if not the only, pleasure of Alison's life of routine was, on sunny days, to take her little charges into Kensington Gardens, and set them by the margin of the blue Round Pond, and watch its tiny fleet of toy ships skimming to and fro, with the hideous, Dutch-looking palace of Kensington as a background—a palace, the rooms of which are only remarkable for memories of William of Orange (and, let us add, of Glencoe) and Elizabeth Villiers, the hideous, one-eyed Countess of Orkney; but stately, even grand, are the avenues of old trees that grow thereby. 'How many secrets have been overheard by these ancient elms since Heneage Finch built the boundary-fence of his pleasance! Could their experience be set forth for the behoof of modern lovers, would they be apt,' asks a writer, 'to encourage or to warn?'
The old palace is still there as it was when the home of the Finches, with its three irregular quadrangles, built of red brick, ornamented with columns, quoins, and cornices of indifferent stone, unchanged as when Solmes Blues mounted guard and the early Georges swore and blustered in broken English and guttural German; but how changed are all its surroundings, for miles upon miles of streets stretch far to the westward, southward, and northward of it now.