"Poor Marcia's baby! I can never forget her pitiful little wail for an hour after she was born. Ah, her face is like a lily just lifted, hunting for its God." Henceforth social lines were indicated by an apparently trivial distinction; the small circle that in former years received Judge Kent, and the strangers and new residents of Y---- spoke of the mistress of Nutwood as Miss Kent; but to the mass of old families she was always "Marcia's child," or "Mrs. Maurice's granddaughter." Very few typical Southern homes, representing wealth, liberal education, and cultured artistic taste when 1861 dawned, have survived the jagged wounds of war, the still more destructive bayonet-loaded harrow of "reconstruction," and the merciless mildew of poverty that tarnished ante-bellum splendor. Nutwood escaped comparatively intact, because, while the owner lived, her revenue--drawn in part from European investments made early in the war by friends in London--enabled her to maintain and repair the property until her plantations could be readjusted under the new regime; and, after her death, the managers of the estate had jealously guarded it from the inroads of decay. Outside conditions, social and domestic, had changed utterly; new canons prevailed, new manners of strange laxity rolled over former dikes of purity, refinement, and decorum; but the turbid tide of up-to-date flippancy broke and ebbed from the tall iron gates of the old house on the hill. Here decadence was excluded, and one coming into the long-closed mansion inhaled a vague haunting aroma, as if old furniture, glass, china, books, paintings, and silver had been sprinkled with powdered sandalwood, lavender, and rose leaves that blended with the subtle pervading atmosphere of hereditary racial pride. It resembled other homes in Y---- as little as some gallery of brilliant, glaring impressionist pictures suggests a cabinet of exquisite miniatures, rich mosaics, and carved ivory, where the witching glamour of mellowing centuries hovers. Eglah found only two scars of time. The conservatory was empty and closed, and in the rear of the house several rows of low brick walls showed where formerly stood what Mrs. Maurice called her "grapery," a sunny spot enclosed with glass, alluring to her grandchild, who had climbed a step-ladder to reach shouldered clusters, as large as her head, of translucent, golden _Chasselas_.