college, provided her with a fair
allowance, bidden her make something of herself for the sake of her name
and then washed her hands of all responsibility. In her own sight she had
fulfilled all her duty. When Virginia Woodhull left ---- College after
attaining degrees galore, but in broken health, and with twenty-eight
years checked off upon her life's calendar, she seemed to have run plump
up against a stone wall.

Dozens of positions were almost forced upon her. Mentally she was
qualified to fill any of them, physically _not one_. Nor could she remain
near the only relatives she possessed had they even cared two straws to
have her remain.

While in this depressing state of mind and body a girl whom she had
coached in the college graduated and was about to return to her home in
Virginia. She was several years Virginia's junior, pretty, warm-hearted
and charming, and possessed the power of looking a little deeper below
the surface than the average human being possesses. She invited Miss
Woodhull to accompany her to Roanoke and fate stepped in and did the
rest. The month was spent in a lovely old home, Virginia Woodhull gained
in health and strength, and recovered something in the way of nerve
control and mental poise. When the month ended she decided to "do" the
state whose name she bore and spent the rest of the year in going from
one point to another in it until she knew its entire topography by heart.

In the course of her journeyings she visited the Luray Caverns as a
matter of course, and enroute came upon picturesque, deserted, decrepit
Leslie Manor, and fell as enthusiastically in love with it as it was
given to her repressed nature to fall in love.

Moreover, for a long time she had been obsessed with a desire to bring
into this happy, easy-going, contented state something of the energy,
progress, intellectual activities (as she gauged them) of New England.
The general uplift inspired by the seat of learning she had just left
after post-graduate courses unto the nth degree: To thoroughly stir
things up and make these comfortable, contented, easy-going Virginians
sit up and take notice of their shortcomings. She was given a work in
life, though quite unsought, and she meant to undertake it exactly as she
has undertaken her college course and make a fine job of it.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to the viewpoint taken, the aunt
in Boston was ceremoniously tucked away in the tomb of her ancestors ju