ht-stand holding a brass house lantern and a
prim array of candles in brass candlesticks.

In the bedrooms were four-posters and the things of four-poster days.
Wing-cheek chairs of cozy depths told of old-time fireside dreams; a
work-table with attenuated legs called to mind the wearisome needlework
of our foremothers; and a brass warming-pan carried us back to the
times when only such devices could make tolerable the frigid winter
beds of our ancestors.

One of the riverward bedrooms is the romantic centre of Westover. It
now belongs to the little daughter of the house; but nearly two
centuries ago it was the room of Evelyn Byrd. Doubtless, in a sense, it
will always be hers. The soft toned panelled walls, the old fireplace
opposite the door, and the cozy little dressing-room looking
gardenward, all seem to speak of her; and the imaginative visitor can
quite discern a graceful figure in colonial gown there in one of the
deep window seats that look out upon the pleasance and the river.

Here the unfortunate colonial beauty lived and died with the grief that
she brought from over the sea. Here she laid away the rich brocade, the
old court gown of brilliant, bitter memories that was shown to us at
Brandon. Through these windows she looked with ever more wistful eyes
out upon the river, her thoughts hurrying with its waters toward the
ocean and the lover beyond. And one day, it is said, a great ship from
London came, and it touched at the pier before her windows, and Charles
Mordaunt plead his cause with the stern father once more. But he plead
in vain, and the ship and the lover sailed away. For a while longer,
the colonial girl waited and looked out upon the river, then she too
went away and the romance was over.

[Illustration: THE ROMANTIC CENTRE OF WESTOVER; EVELYN BYRD'S OLD
ROOM.]

In the family circle at Westover to-day are Mrs. Ramsay, two sons, and
the little daughter, Elizabeth. Among well-known families appearing in
Mrs. Ramsay's ancestry are the Sears and the Gardiners of
Massachusetts, she being a descendant of Lyon Gardiner of Gardiner's
Island. She also claims kinship with the Randolphs and the Reeveses of
Virginia, and a collateral and remote connection with the Byrds.

When we returned to the steamer pier after our visit at Westover, we
found quite a wind on the river and the houseboat fretfully bumping the
pilings. We hastened aboard, ran down stream before a stiff wind, and
skurried back into ou