Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/37

 piazza, ran across the front, with delicately carven pillars and lattice-work. The narrow doorway was flanked by quaint side-lights, through which it was impossible to catch a glimpse of the interior. Overhead, two gable windows leaned gravely over the piazza roof, strewn with leaves fallen from the magnolias. It seemed an ideal dwelling for a maiden, quiet, retired, and yet linked with the busy life of the city, from which it seemed to draw modestly back. Three days later the Ruysdales were settled in the little house, whose interior proved in every way as attractive as Margaret had fancied it to be. Beside the main building there was a large airy room in the rear, which was soon converted into a studio; this was detached, and stood at some distance from the house in a pleasant garden shut, in from the thoroughfare in the rear by a high iron fence of very beautiful workmanship. Cunning artificers in iron New Orleans has known, and his must have been a master-hand which moulded the convolvulus vine and flowers twisting about the sheaves of ripe corn in the garden rail. And what a garden it was, with its many tinted roses, one sort for every month in the year, its thick bed of violets all abloom in these first days of February!

Two months have passed since General Stuart Ruysdale and his daughter came to New