The Holbrook house, three miles from the Capitol, of the dome of which it commands a pretty glimpse across an expanse of foliage, is one of the old residences remaining from the days of the slave-holders.  Like many such places it has been much altered and improved.  It seems to have been originally a one and-a-half-story stone dwelling, to which some later proprietor has added a high-peaked roof, dormer windows, and ample piazzas.  It stands half-way up a slope, near the top of which is a grove.  A brook runs down through the woods on the other side of the road, and beyond that rises a steep little bluff crowned with scrub-oaks and chestnuts.

The attraction that drew people to Holbrook farm was not the proprietor himself, nor very much his maiden sister, the housekeeper, nor yet Carter, the farmer and manager who came with them from Richmond.  It was rather the engaging manners and amiable beauty of Nina Holbrook, the daughter of the house.  The old gentleman was a partial paralytic, whimsical, and not especially sociable.  He was known to have lived in princely style at Richmond, formerly.  He was said to have met for some years past with continual reverses, in the loss of property, in sickness, and in the death of friends.  The farm was bought with almost the last remnants of a great fortune.

As Barwood strode down the piazza, a young lady rose from her reading to give him her hand.

Blonde beauty is slightly indefinite.  The edges are, as it were, too much softened off into the background.  The figure before Barwood was fresh, distinct, clear-cut,—­pre-Raphaelitish, to take a word from painting.  In all the details, from the ribbon in her feathery brown hair to the pretty buttoned boot, there was the ineffable aroma of a pure, delicate taste.

To a man of Barwood’s temperament falling in love was difficult.  He analyzed too closely.  To ask the tender passion too many questions is to repel its advances.

Nevertheless, after two years of intimate association, in which he had discovered in Nina Holbrook a frankness and loveliness of character commensurate with her personal graces, he had arrived at this condition.  First, He believed that her permanent influence upon his character could cure his moodiness and his unpractical tendencies, and enable him to exert his fullest powers.  Second, By making the supposition that anything should intervene to limit or break off their intercourse, he found that she had become indispensable to him.

Their acquaintance had begun in some one of the ordinary ways in which people meet.  It might have been at a tea-party, or a secretary’s reception, or a boat excursion up the Potomac.  They discovered that they had mutual acquaintances to talk about.  His evening rides began to be directed through the pretty lanes that led to Holbrook.  She loaned him a book; he brought her confectionery; they played some piano duets together.