The rattling vehicle swung through an impressive high gate and they were looking down between a row of trees. To their left, running straight through the middle of the thoroughfare lay a grass grown parkway so dotted with shrubs that she got only fleeting glimpses of the houses on the other side. Those on her own side she gazed at with wonder. They were set far apart, with generous lawns, and the suggestion of gardens farther back behind walls and iron grill work. The big houses revealed their age, not only by their old-fashioned and heterogeneous architecture, but by the smoke-grimed look of their brick and stone. “How lovely and peaceful,” thought Ellen, fascinated at the fresh sight of green everywhere spotted and patched with sunlight. She seemed to have been wearing dark glasses for months and months.... She noticed that the driver was slowing down his vehicle and was craning his neck for the house numbers. “My land,” she murmured, “we’re going to live here.... Look, Moira, look!” she could not help but cry aloud--and then flushed pink when she saw the doctor had heard the name. This was Trezevant Place, its fame already beginning to dwindle, so that Ellen, acquainted only with the new city, had heard of it but once or twice. For two generations the patrician families had housed there, and a few of the original owners had remained, standing on their dignity, defying the relentless town, which had long sprawled up to it, and around it and far beyond, unsightly, clamorous and vulgar. The snob that is in everybody claimed Ellen at that moment and she longed for an audience of Meadowburns and Potters to watch them disembark. The cab came to an abrupt stop before the bronze figure of a barefooted negro boy holding out an iron ring in one chubby paw. Ellen faced a front door of many bevelled panes of glass which reflected the bright sky into her eyes. Her knees failed her, but with a free hand she grasped the doctor’s sleeve, finding in the act reassurance enough to mount the steps between the red stone pillars. A maid appeared in the doorway. “Oh, it’s you, doctor,” she said, beaming at them from under her neat white cap. “Mrs. Seymour is waiting in the library. Go right in, please.” Ellen found herself in a room filled with book-shelves, and mahogany, and leather-covered chairs, facing a small lady who did not leave her straight, uncomfortable seat. The greying hair was done up in a knot on the top of her head and behind it was a dark spreading comb. She wore a light blue silk frock with a white collar of lace that folded back over her shoulders and left her neck bare. It was old-fashioned looking, Ellen thought, yet “nice” as she would have put it, meaning smart, and she noticed that the woman’s throat was smooth and plump. Her graceful ankles showed, crossed, above a pair of little grey slippers with very high heels. What a little doll of a person! she thought.