Though the dwelling was called a cottage, Philip had enlarged the original modest building into a villa of some pretensions.

On either side a graceful and well-proportioned portico stretched verandahs, covered with roses and clematis; to the right extended a range of costly conservatories, terminating in vistas of trellis-work which formed those elegant alleys called rosaries, and served to screen the more useful gardens from view.

The lawn, smooth and even, was studded with American plants and shrubs in flower, and bounded on one side by a small lake, on the opposite bank of which limes and cedars threw their shadows over the clear waves.

On the other side a light fence separated the grounds from a large paddock, in which three or four hunters grazed in indolent enjoyment.

It was one of those cottages which bespeak the ease and luxury not often found in more ostentatious mansions--an abode which, at sixteen, the visitor contemplates with vague notions of poetry and love--which, at forty, he might think dull and d---d expensive-which, at sixty, he would pronounce to be damp in winter, and full of earwigs in the summer.