ainters and of notable early American artists.

[Illustration: IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.]

In the drawing-room, a canvas by Charles Wilson Peale may be regarded
as the portrait-host among the shadowy figures gathered there, its
subject being Colonel Benjamin Harrison. He was friend and college
roommate of Thomas Jefferson, and a member of the first State Executive
Council in 1776. Against the dense background is shown a slender
gentleman of the old school, with an intellectual, kindly face and
expressive eyes.

About him is a distinguished gathering--dames and damsels in rich
attire and languid elegance; gallants and nobles in court costume and
dashing pose, jewelled hand on jewelled sword.

In the dining-room, the portrait hostess is found, the wife of the
Colonel Harrison who presides in the drawing-room. She was the
granddaughter of the noted colonial exquisite and man of letters,
Colonel William Byrd, whose old home, Westover, we should soon visit on
our way up the river. It was through her marriage to Colonel Harrison
that there were added to the Brandon collection many of the paintings
and other art treasures of the Byrd family, including a certain,
well-known canvas that carries a story with it.

It is an old, old story--indeed the painting itself is dimmed by the
passing of nearly two centuries; but just as the sweet face looks out
from its frame ever girlish, so does perennial youth seem to dwell in
the romance of the "Fair Maid of the James." The portrait is by Sir
Godfrey Kneller. It shows a beautiful young woman. Her gray-blue gown
is cut in a stiff, long-waisted style of the eighteenth century, yet
still showing the slim grace of the maiden. The head is daintily
poised. A red rose is in her hair and one dark curl falls across a
white shoulder. Her face is oval and delicately tinted. She follows you
with her soft, brown eyes, and her lips have the thought of a smile.

Such was the colonial beauty, Evelyn Byrd, daughter of Colonel William
Byrd. Though her home was not here but at Westover, and there she
sleeps under her altar-tomb, yet the girlish presence seems at Brandon
too, where the winsome face looks down from the wall, and where we must
pause to tell her story.

This Virginia girl was educated in London where she had most of her
social triumphs. There she was presented at court and there began the
pitiful romance of her life in her meeting with Charles Mordaunt. In
all youth's happy heedlessness the