A Captain Montresor--he who afterward, when a colonel, was Howe’s engineer--used to ride with her in the spring of ‘69. He was a tall, stout man of middle age, and much spoken of as likely to marry my Aunt Gainor, although she was older than he, for, as fat Oliver de Lancey said years after, “There is no age to a woman’s money, and guineas are always young.” My aunt, Gainor Wynne, was still a fine gentlewoman, and did not look her years. As concerned this question of age, she was like a man, and so in fact she was in some other ways. She would tell any one how old she was. She once informed Mr. de Lancey that she was so much more of a man than any British officer she knew that she did not see how she could decently marry any of them. I think it was about this time that I saw a little scene which much impressed me, and which often recurs to my memory. We--that is, Mr. Montresor, and my Aunt Gainor and I--of a Saturday afternoon rode over by the lower ferry and up Gray’s Lane, and so to Mr. Hamilton’s country-seat. “The Woodlands,” as it was called, stood on a hill amid many beautiful trees and foreign shrubs and flowers. Below it ran the quiet Schuylkill, and beyond, above the governor’s woods, could be seen far away Dr. Kearsley’s fine spire of Christ Church. No better did Master Wren himself ever contrive, or more proportioned to the edifice beneath it. On the porch were Mr. Hamilton and Mrs. Penn, with saucy gray eyes, and Mrs. Ferguson. A slim young girl, Rebecca Franks, was teasing a cat. She teased some one all her days, and did it merrily, and not unkindly. She was little and very pretty, with a dark skin. Did she dream she should marry a British soldier--a baronet and general--and end her days in London well on in the century yet to come? Andrew Allen, whose father, the chief justice, took his wife, Margaret, from this house, sat on the steps near Miss Franks, and beside her little Peggy Shippen, who already gave promise of the beauty which won for her so pitiful a life. Nothing in this garden of gay women and flowers foretold the tragedy of West Point. I think of it now with sad wonder. In one or another way these people became known in our annals. Most of them were of the more exclusive party known as the governor’s set, and belonged to the Church of England. With the Galloways, Cadwaladers, Willings, Shippens, Rawles, and others, they formed a more or less distinct society, affecting London ways, dining at the extreme hour of four, loving cards, the dance, fox-hunting, and to see a main of game-cocks. Among them--not of them--came and went certain of what were called “genteel” Quakers--Morrises, Pembertons, Whartons, and Logans. They had races too,--that is, the governor’s set,--and one of my delights was, on the way to the academy, to stop in Third street, above Chestnut, and see the race-horses in the Widow Nichols’s stables at the sign of the Indian Queen.