Page:The American fugitive in Europe.djvu/250

242 while passing the wine from me to the person with whom I drank.

After a while, as is usual, the ladies all rose and left the room. The retiring of the fair sex left the gentlemen in a more free-and-easy position, and consequently the topics of conversation were materially changed, but not for the better. The presence of women is always a restraint in the right direction. An hour after the ladies had gone, the gentlemen were requested to retire to the drawing-room, where we found tea ready to be served up. I was glad when the time came to leave the dining-room, for I felt it a great bore to be compelled to remain at the table three hours. Tea over, the wine again brought on, and the company took a stroll through the grounds at the back of the villa. It was a bright moonlight night, and the stars were out, and the air came laden with the perfume of sweet flowers, and there were no sounds to be heard, except the musical splashing of the little cascade at the end of the garden, and the song of the nightingale, that seemed to be in one of the trees near by. How pleasant everything looked, with the flowers creeping about the summer-house, and the windows opening to the velvet lawn, with its modest front, neat trellis-work, and meandering vine! The small smooth fish-pond, and the life-like statues standing or kneeling in different parts of the grounds, gave it the appearance of a very paradise.

"There," said his lordship, "is where Cowley used to sit, under that tree, and read."