It is the fate of true love apparently never to run like a railway. 'But why that proverbial asperity should be confined to what is true we are unable to say,' writes a novelist, adding, 'For our own part, that eternal smoothness has but little charm; and the ripple which reflects sunshine and shade, bright gleams and darkening clouds in love as in Nature, gives brightness and variety to the prosiest poetry in the world.' But doubtless Goring and Alison Cheyne were beginning to think that they had endured enough of the darkening clouds that seemed as yet without a silver lining. CHAPTER XVII. HUMILIATION. Had Goring indeed forgotten or ceased to love her? This was the ever-recurring question in the mind of Alison now, and she recalled the lines of the Spanish song, _Vanse mis amores_, as applicable to herself: 'How could I bear--how bear disdain, Who not the slightest favour ever Received without a blush of pain; How could I bear disdain? O, never! One hour of absence, swift and brief, I could not bear--how should I bear A long and tedious age of grief, An age of grief, of gloom and fear? O! I shall die without relief, For I am young, and--O, sincere.' If Goring was, as she thought bitterly and repiningly, remiss in attempting to trace her or not caring to do so, as her heart at times began to forebode, she certainly would not and could not throw herself in his way; she could but wait and hope, suffer and endure. But one day she had an unexpected annoyance to encounter. While the two little girls with the fantastic names, Irene and Iseulte, played on the grass near her in Kensington Gardens, seated under the shadow of the trees, she was reading--or trying to read, for her mind was ever preoccupied--a railway volume, she became conscious that a man was hovering near, indeed, hanging over her. She looked up and instantly recognized Sir Jasper Dehorsey--or Captain Smith, as she supposed him to be--regarding her with his calm and insolent though admiring and insoucient smile. He lifted his hat, and said, with a bow, 'I knew I was not mistaken; there could not be another like my little runaway of Antwerp.' Alison blushed scarlet with intense annoyance and then grew pale with alarm, she felt herself so friendless and alone. Finding her silent he spoke again. 'We have met before--you remember me, I hope?' 'Sir--I have no wish to remember you, and still less to renew the acquaintance,' said Alison, quitting her seat. 'Now, that's too bad,' said Dehorsey, deliberately barring her way; 'too bad indeed. If my admiration of you----' 'Please to remember that I cannot listen to your insolence. These children to whom I am governess----' 'Governess--you--here is a game!' said he, mockingly. 'Ahoi, girls--run after this, find it and keep it?'