through large evergreens, and by a winding path, to the
house. The land was not half an acre in size, yet I was sure that I had
been over a large estate. The same delusion clung to the house, which
was in looks like one of Gainsborough's cottages, and ought to have been
at least two hundred years old, instead of two. But Downing's advent had
already wrought miracles here and there in our land; and a little while
before Mr. Remington had been bitten with an architectural mania. So
under the transplanted trees, and beneath trailing vines of Virginia
creeper and Boursault roses, there peeped the brown gables of a cottage,
which arose and stood there as reposeful and weather-stained as if it
had been built before the Revolution. Mr. Remington showed us twenty
unexpected doors, and juttings-out here and there, to catch a view, or
to let in the sun, and rejoiced in our pleasure, as he had in the
garden, like a child. In the library, Mrs. Remington received us,
looking pale, and being very silent.

I sat down by her without being attracted at all--rather repelled by the
faint sickliness of everything connected with her appearance. But
neither her pale blue eyes, nor her yellow hair, nor her straw-colored
gown and blue ribbons would have repelled me; I could not make her talk
at all. I never saw such reticence before or since. As if she were
determined "to die and make no sign," she sat, bowing and smiling, and
amounting to nothing, one way or another,--giving no opinion, if asked,
and asking no question. She was passively polite, but so very near
nothing that I was rejoiced when Mr. Remington entered with my husband,
and proposed that we should go into the dining-room. He carelessly
introduced Mrs. Remington, but further than that seemed not to know she
was in existence; and I must confess, I did not wonder. While my husband
made, or tried to make, some conversation with her, Mr. Remington showed
me an exquisite Clytie in marble, and a landscape by Cole, which hung in
a good light, and showed its wonderful wild beauty. And now for the
third reason that this was a white day.

VII.

In a little room connected with the refreshment-room there stood before
a large mirror somebody winding a red scarf about her head. I had only
time to see that the head was small and shapely, and the figure full of
flexible grace, when it turned and nodded to the party. Of course, it
could only be Mrs. Lewis, as she at once said, in a honey-sweet