So that when facts were lacking, sometimes he would kindle true
fancies of her young life in this place: as when she reclined on mats and
cushions in the breeze-swept balls, fanned by a slave and reading the Tatler
or the Spectator; or if it were the chill twilights of October, perhaps came
in from a walk in the cool woods with a red leaf at her white throat, and
seated herself at the spinet, while a low blaze from the deep chimney seat
flickered over her face, and the low music flickered with the shadows; or
when the white tempests of winter raved outside, gave her nights to the
reading of "Tom Jones," by the light of myrtleberry candles on a
slender-legged mahogany table.
But he had heard a great deal of her visits at the other great country
places of the day. Often at Greenway Court, where her father went to ride to
hounds with Lord Fairfax and Washington; at Carter's Grove; at the homes of
the Berkeleys, the Masons, the Spottswoods; once, indeed, at Castlewood
itself, where the stately Madam Esmond Warrington had placed her by her own
side at dinner and had kissed her check at leaving; but oftenest at Brandon
Mansion where one of her heroines had lived--Evelyn Byrd; so that, Sir
Godfrey Knell having painted that sad young lady, who now lies with a heavy
stone on her heavier heart in the dim old burying-ground at Westover, she
would have it that hers must be painted in the same identical fashion, with
herself sitting on a green bank, a cluster of roses in her hand, a
shepherd's crook across her knees.
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