Miss Victoria De Jobbyns (she had originally been christened Sarah, but that name was dropped now as vulgar) had from the first felt an emotion of pique that her little sisters' governess should be so lady-like, so perfectly patrician in air and bearing, and, more than all, so uselessly handsome; for, of course, she thought, of what use is beauty to a governess? Her mother's first idea had been, what a perilous inmate in a house if there had been a grown-up son; but, apart from her being a paid dependant, her very loveliness was an all-sufficient reason for secluding her in the school-room, and never permitting her to be seen by guests or visitors, especially of the male sex. 'You are Scotch?' said the young lady, abruptly and interrogatively, on the occasion of her first visit. 'Yes.' 'And yet you don't look a bit Scotch, or talk like them either.' Alison smiled as she wondered what the young lady thought the natives of the North were like. 'Where do your people live--in the Highlands?' 'My family are--all dead.' 'I see you are in mourning--all dead--everyone?' 'Yes,' replied Alison, curtly. 'How funny!' Alison stared at this peculiar remark. 'What was that you were playing when I came in?' asked her visitor. 'A mazurka of Chopin's.' '_Shopang_--who is he? And how well you sing, too.' 'I am glad you think so,' replied Alison, who sometimes accompanied herself on the old, ill-tuned, and twangling school-room piano. 'Ma will be having you to play at her weekly receptions.' Alison shivered at the bare idea of figuring thus among such people as were there. 'Were you trained for the stage, or was your father a professional? of course he was.' 'He was not' said Alison, sharply, and at this blunt remark her soft violet eyes seemed to become hard and blue as a steel sword-blade; the little colour she had died out of her face, and she looked ten years older; but her blunt visitor--she of the frizzed, sandy hair, and snub nose--mistook the cause of her emotion, and said, '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.