Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/220

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The Strand Magazine.
221

and near to them are the Duke and Duchess of Fife and the Duke and Duchess of Westminster. Here, again, is the Queen with one of the Duke of Connaught's children, the old Emperor of Germany and Princess Beatrice.


The drawing-room
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

The dining-room is an apartment remarkable for its fine oak furniture—a beautifully carved sideboard and quaint clerical-looking high-back chairs. The table—which for the moment is florally decorated with sweet-peas which have evidently strayed from the great A—is lighted by a trio of electric lights beneath an immense crimson shade. The room contains many fine oil paintings, and against a chair, presumably waiting to fill a place on the wall, is an engraving of the Jubilee picture of the scene in Westminster Abbey, showing Madame Albani standing next to Miss Ellen Terry. A fine water-colour shows a glen, with the smoke of Old Mar Lodge rising. This is the resting-place of Madame Albani for two months every year. It is a quaint old Scotch house, possessing a grand garden, where the singer frankly admits she spends her time in gathering flowers and eating raspberries. Here, too, her abilities as an amateur gardener and angler have full play. Every morning, after breakfast, the beds have her close attention for one allotted hour, and then, with rod and line, she will sit on the banks of the Dee, and many a good trout and weighty salmon have responded to her silent invitation to take "a bite."


The drawing-room
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

A little conservatory, sweet with fuchsias and gay with ferns and palms, where Miss Lajeunesse—Madame Albani's sister—is just now engaged in watering them, leads