, contented loveliness. She extends her hand
and greets him with a firm clasp of hearty welcome, and a second edition
of that dazzling smile, so becoming to her, so bewitching to him.

"How do you do, Mr. Flagg? I believe your train must be late. How well
you are looking, in spite of the heat and the dust! We will have your
baggage secured as soon as possible and placed in the carriage, then we
will drive to the cottage in time for lunch."

"Thank you Miss Fenwick, I am delighted to see you looking so well. My
journey from Washington has been a very pleasant one; I have enjoyed it
and have not suffered from the heat."

The carriage now came up, they stepped in and commenced the beautiful
drive of one and one-half miles to "Fairy Fern Cottage," which was
charmingly located on the summit of these famously terraced hills. Hills
that have been historic since the revolutionary days of General
Washington, when their slopes were white with the tents of his soldiers.
As they approached the cottage, the artistic eye of Fillmore Flagg noted
with pleasure the broad expanse of spacious lawn, gently sloping down to
the road. Half-moon-shaped, it presented for his admiration five acres
of smoothly shaven, velvety green. For one-eighth of a mile, the entire
width of the lawn and cottage grounds, a low wall of ornamental cut
stone separated the lawn from the road and formed the straight line of
the half-moon. From the gates at either end of the wall a broad,
beautifully kept driveway swept around the semicircle of the lawn,
passing just in front of the cottage at the center of the deep bay of
the half-moon. On each side of the driveway the greensward was
beautified by alternating star and diamond-shaped plots of geraniums,
roses, gladioluses, canna and nasturtions. Sitting close to the outer
edge of the drive, about ten feet apart, commencing at the corners of
the porch on either side, were rows of potted palms extending around the
curve, one hundred and fifty feet each way--the palms gradually growing
smaller as the distance from the cottage became greater. The effect was
beautifully unique and suggestively semi-tropical. The cottage and lawn
was embayed by a crowning crescent of choice foliage and shade trees;
the thin horns of the crescent terminated at the gateways in low gray
stone towers. From these points the horns gradually grew broader and the
shrubbery rose higher. First the rhododendrons mixed with clumps of
hollyhocks, ne