In those days the manor house sat in the midst of a gently rolling green. Spreading trees towered above precise box borders; turfed walkways, bordered with beds of delicate tea-roses, crossed each other at right angles; Cherokee rose-vines climbed the garden walls; and wisteria, tumbling over the veranda, showed bright against the whitewashed bricks, joined with pink crêpe myrtle by the door and flowed out toward the white-blossomed magnolias in the yard. The elegant, swarthy Hamilton lingered, putting off his return to New York as long as he could. He told them how he hated that city’s crooked, dirty streets and shrill-voiced shopkeepers. All this was fifty years ago. The great estate had been sold off in small lots. On the small plantation that was left, the outhouses were tumbling down, moss hung too low on the trees, the hedges needed trimming and bare places showed in the lawn. Everything needed a coat of paint. Slowly but surely the place was consuming itself, as each year bugs ate into the tobacco crop. “It will last out our time.” More than that consideration did not concern the present master of Freelands. There was a faint wild fragrance of sweet shrub in the air--the smell of spring. It was the first day of January, but he knew that plowing must be got under way. Spring would be early. He sighed. Undoubtedly, things would have been very different had his elder brother lived. For Clive, Jr., had had will and energy. He would have seen to it that the slaves did their work. He would have made the crops pay. Clive had been a fighter. In fact, Clive had been killed in a drunken brawl. The whole thing had been hushed up, and young William sent off to Europe. For several years they spoke of him as “studying abroad.” Actually, William did learn a great deal. He met lots of people who became less queer as the days and months passed. He ran into Byron in Italy. A cable from his mother had brought him hurrying back home. His father was dead when he arrived. Everything seemed to have shrunk. For a little while he was appalled by what he saw and heard. Then gradually the world outside fell away. His half-hearted attempts to change things seemed silly. He had forgotten how easy life could be in Maryland. Now he looked at the substantial old house. Someone was opening the second-floor shutters. That meant his mother was getting up. He smiled, thinking how like the house she was--untouched, unmarred, unshaken by the passing years. At seventy she was magnificent--the real master of Freelands. He bowed to her every wish, except one. Here he shook his head and laughed softly. At forty, he remained unmarried.