WALPOLE HOUSE 



The trio vanished indoors, but though I watched, nobody else 

 came forth never a Duchess of Cleveland, or a Daniel O'Connell, 

 not even a sculptor who had wrought a great work, and made 

 much use of the garden ; nor the eminent actors who later trod 

 that stage not one of these came into my day-dream. And this 

 was not unnatural when one comes to think of it, because romance 

 is more lasting than history and while fiction of the first class will 

 live for ever in the human mind, bald, unadorned facts are forgotten. 



' The Castlemaine " I am told, drew her last breath in a 

 panelled upper room to the front ; where two large windows face 

 the Eyot, and another, set in the angle of the house, commands 

 the whole length of the Mall, the lovely bend of the Thames towards 

 Kew, and glorious views of the sunset. This may be so, but I am 

 more interested to know that in a certain little attic in the roof, 

 with a tiny window buried in greenery, had slept the dependent, 

 Becky Sharp, one who was no better, but no worse, than the 

 Duchess herself ; and that the sweet face of the well-to-do pupil 

 from Russell Square, had looked out upon the garden from yonder 

 window to the left, on the first-floor back ; the window that is 

 nearest to the great sumach tree, in the corner next to Strawberry 

 House. 



197 



