Mrs. Deland lives all over her house, the different rooms on the first and second floors being in constant use, and equally familiar to her friends. If she has installed herself in the sunny library overhead, or in the salon opening off of it, you will as likely as not be summoned to join her in one or the other of these pleasant rooms, and will find the same simple yet luxurious appointments--the cheery open fires, the profusion of flowers, the tasteful and harmonious decorations--evenly distributed throughout the entire house. Books are stored away in every conceivable receptacle, Mr. Deland’s taste in this matter, as indeed in most others, being as fully represented as that of his wife. One even runs across a set of book-shelves fitted into the wall at the head of the staircase, where the old-fashioned niche once held its place. But although they are found to exist in such quantities, neither books nor periodicals are allowed to become an annoyance by being left about to crowd out other things and to collect dust. The exquisite neatness and order that prevail speak volumes for the refinement and managerial capacity of the mistress of the house. An authoress is supposedly the least practical of persons; and yet in this one instance an exception must be noted, for there are countless signs that the hand at the helm is both experienced and sure. Mrs. Deland is of Scottish ancestry on her father’s side of the family, and, as a lineal descendant of John of Gaunt, may be said to have sprung from the house of Lancaster. There is about her something of the freedom and indomitable strength of the Highlands--a look in the clear blue eye, a warmth of coloring, a cut of features, and, above all, a certain unruly assertiveness of stray locks of hair--that awakens memories of the heather and of the wind upon the hills, coming heavily laden with the odor of peat and fresh from its contact with some neighboring loch. And, again, there are moments when other and quite different pictures suggest themselves, as the outcome of a still more subtle relation to the fragrant treasures of her garden--the delicate mignonette, the open-hearted June rose--with just a touch of passion in its veins to make it kin with all the world--and the sensitive convolvulus, lifting its face heavenward to greet the light, but robbed of aspirations when the shadows settle into gloom.