She opened the garden gate, and its mingled perfumes made her sigh with pleasure. Such boxwood borders, such gay, sweet flowers, such brick walks laid in zig-zag pattern, and shaded by elm and maple trees are not to be found in New York city now, but to madame they were only the beautiful frame of her daily life. She cast her eyes down to see if the walk had been swept, and then looked up at the house as if it were a friend. The flag she loved, the flag under which her young husband had died fighting for liberty, was floating from her window. She stood still and gazed at it. Without words it spoke to her, and without words she answered its claim. In a moment she had accepted whatever of trial or triumph it might bring her. She went forward more hastily, but, ere she reached the entrance, a very pretty girl came running to meet her. “Have you heard the news, grandmother?” she cried. “Are you not very happy? What did Sapphira say? And Aunt Carlita?--and uncle?--and all of them?” Madame was unable to answer her questions. She clasped her hand firmly, and went with her into the house. Straight to the main living room she went, an apartment in which the dearest portion of her household gods were enshrined: massive silver services on a richly carved sideboard; semi-lucent china in the corner cupboard; three pictures of Teniers that one of her husband’s ancestors had bought from the hands of the great painter himself; and chairs of antique workmanship that had crossed the ocean with Samuel Bloommaert in 1629 when he bought Zwanendael, the Valley of the Swans. The wide, open fireplace of this room was in itself a picture. The deep cavity at the back and the abutting jambs were coloured a vivid scarlet, with a wash made from iron dust; the hearthstone was white as snow with pipeclay, and in front of the heavy brass irons was a tall blue and white jar with dragons for handles, holding a bunch of red roses, mingled with green asparagus branches. The broad chimney piece above this home picture had also its distinctive charm. It shone with silver candlesticks, their snuffers, and little trays. It kept the silver posset pan that had made the baby’s food half a century ago; the christening cups of her son Gerardus and her daughter Elsie; and two beautiful lacquered tea-caddies from India and China. Opposite the fireplace, at the end of the room, there was a long table black with age and heavy with Nuremburg carving; but it was on a small round one which stood by an open window that a dinner service for two persons was very prettily laid. Madame sat down in a chair near it, and Annette took off her scarf and bonnet and long gloves, and chattered volubly as she did so: