CHAPTER L.

CLAUDIA’S CITY HOME.

  How beautiful the mansion’s throned
    Behind its elm tree’s screen,
  With simple attic cornice crowned
    All graceful and serene.

  —­Anon.

Just north of the Capitol park, upon a gentle eminence, within its own well-shaded and well-cultivated grounds, stood a fine, old, family mansion that had once been the temporary residence of George Washington.

The house was very large, with many spacious rooms and broad passages within, and many garden walks and trellised arbors around it.

In front were so many evergreen trees and in the rear was so fine a conservatory of blooming flowers, that even in the depth, of winter it seemed like summer there.

The house was so secluded within its many thick trees and high garden walls that the noise of the city never reached its inmates, though they were within five minutes’ walk of the Capitol and ten minutes’ drive of the President’s mansion.

Judge Merlin had been very fortunate in securing for the season this delightful home, where he could be within easy reach of his official business and at the same time enjoy the quiet so necessary to his temperament.

That winter he had been appointed one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, and it was very desirable to have so pleasant a dwelling place within such easy reach of the Capitol, where the court was held.  At the head of this house his young daughter had been placed as its mistress.  She had not yet appeared anywhere in public.  She was reserving herself for two events:  the arrival of her chaperone and the first evening reception of the President.  Her presence in the city was not even certainly known beyond her own domestic circle; though a vague rumor, started no one knew by whom, was afloat, to the effect that Miss Merlin, the young Maryland heiress and beauty, was expected to come out in Washington during the current season.

Meanwhile she remained in seclusion in her father’s house.

It was to this delightful town house, so like the country in its isolation, that Ishmael Worth was invited.

It was just at sunrise on Tuesday morning that the old steamer “Columbia,” having Ishmael on board, landed at the Seventh Street wharf, and the young man, destined some future day to fill a high official position in the Federal government, took his humble carpetbag in his hand and entered the Federal city.

Ah! many thousands had entered the National capital before him, and many more thousands would enter it after him, only to complain of it, to carp over it, to laugh at it, for its “magnificent distances,” its unfinished buildings, its muddy streets, and its mean dwellings.

But Ishmael entered within its boundaries with feelings of reverence and affection.  It was the City of Washington, the sacred heart of the nation.