Across the soft water, in rich contrast, lie hills, and groves, and cotton-fields—the latter, one of the gayest features in southern scenery. They are sometimes a mile square. They are planted in straight rows, six feet apart; and the earth between them, of a rich Spanish-red colour, is kept entirely clean from weeds. The plants grow to the height of seven feet, and spread in full-leaved branches, bearing brilliant white and gold-hued flowers. When in full bloom, a cotton-field by itself is a gorgeous landscape. Beyond these hills, and groves, and cotton fields, are other cotton-fields, and groves, and hills, extending on and on, until afar off they blend with the horizon, in soft, indistinct hues, mingled together like the tints of the clouds. I have led you through the beautiful grounds immediately around and in front of the villa; but behind the mansion, and back of the grove, there are gardens and orchards, and still other fields of cotton and outhouses, and offices, and the negro village called “The Quarters.” CHAPTER III. THE PLANTER’S DAUGHTER. She has halls and she has vassals, and the resonant steam eagles Follow fast on the directing of her floating dove-like hand, With a thunderous vapour trailing underneath the starry vigils, So to mark upon the blasted heavens the measure of her lands. _Mrs. Browning._ The summer sun had just sunk below the horizon, leaving all the heavens suffused with a pale golden and roseate light, that falls softly on the semi-transparent waters of the Pearl, flowing serenely on between its banks of undulating hills and dales, and green and purple lights and glooms. No jarring sight or sound breaks the voluptuous stillness of the scene and hour. The golden light has faded from the windows and balconies of the villa, and sunk with the sunken sun. An evening breeze is rising from the distant pine woods, that will soon tempt the inmates forth to enjoy its exhilarating and salubrious freshness and fragrance. But as yet all is quiet about the mansion. In the innermost sanctuary of that house reposes Miss Sutherland. It is the most elegant of a sumptuous suit of apartments, upon which Mr. Sutherland had spared no amount of care or expense—having summoned from New Orleans a French _artiste_, of distinguished genius in his profession, to superintend their interior architecture, furnishing and adornment. The suit consists of a boudoir, two drawing-rooms, a hall or picture gallery, a music room, a double parlour, a library, and dining and breakfast rooms; and, by the machinery of grooved doors, all these splendid apartments may be thrown into one magnificent saloon. But the most finished and perfect of the suite is the luxurious boudoir of India. It is a very bower of beauty and love, a _chef d’œuvre_ of artistic genius, a casket worthy to enshrine the Pearl of Pearl River.