The house stands on a considerable elevation.  The main portion, with its hipped roof and mullioned windows, is very old, but the two wings that stretch to the east and west are comparatively modern, and date back little over a century.  Time has mellowed them into harmony with the major part of the house, and the kindly Virginia creeper has done its utmost to conceal the fact that they are constructed of plebeian bricks which were baked in this country; but Matocton was Matocton long before these wings were built, and a mere affair of yesterday, such as the Revolution, antedates them.  They were not standing when Tarleton paid his famous visit to Matocton.

In the main hall, you may still see the stairs up which he rode on horseback, and the slashes which his saber hacked upon the hand-rail.

To the front of the mansion lies a close-shaven lawn, dotted with sundry oaks and maples; and thence, the formal gardens descend in six broad terraces.  There is when summer reigns no lovelier spot than this bright medley of squares and stars and triangles and circles—­all Euclid in flowerage—­which glow with multitudinous colors where the sun strikes.  You will find no new flowers at Matocton, though.  Here are verbenas, poppies, lavender and marigolds, sweet-william, hollyhocks and columbine, phlox, and larkspur, and meadowsweet, and heart’s-ease, just as they were when Thomasine Musgrave, Matocton’s first chatelaine, was wont to tend them; and of all floral parvenus the gardens are innocent.  Box-hedges mark the walkways.

The seventh terrace was, until lately, uncultivated, the trees having been cleared away to afford pasturage.  It is now closely planted with beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of fieldpines and cedar and sassafras and blackberry bushes, which again masks a drop of some ten feet to the river.

The beach here is narrow; at high tide, it is rarely more than fifteen feet in breadth, and is in many places completely submerged.  Past this, the river lapses into the horizon line without a break, save on an extraordinarily clear day when Bigelow’s Island may be seen as a dim smudge upon the west.

All these things, Rudolph Musgrave regarded with curiously deep interest for one who had seen them so many times before.  Then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he sauntered forward across the lawn.  He had planned several appropriate speeches, but, when it came to the point of giving them utterance, he merely held out his hand in an awkward fashion, and said: 

“Anne!”

She looked up from her reading.

She did this with two red-brown eyes that had no apparent limits to their depth.  Her hand was soft; it seemed quite lost in the broad palm of a man’s hand.

“Dear Rudolph,” she said, as simply as though they had parted yesterday, “it’s awfully good to see you again.”

Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat, and sat down beside her.