tambour embroidery, when the name of Westover's young master came
up, a circle of eyelashes went down and a circle of tender hearts went
both up and down. The prize was finally won by Lucy Parke, daughter of
Colonel Daniel Parke whose portrait hangs at Brandon.

Some years later, family litigation called Colonel Byrd to England,
where his wife and little daughter, Evelyn, joined him, and where his
wife soon died. The residence in London continued for a number of
years; and resulted in giving the Colonel a new wife in the person of a
rich young widow, and in giving social finish and a broken heart to
Evelyn Byrd.

Under the guidance of her father, she was educated after the manner of
the fashionable life of that day. It must have been a time quite to the
elegant Colonel's liking when London turned in admiration to his
daughter; when, but sixteen and already crowned with social successes,
the cultured beauty from the plantation on the James was presented at
the English Court.

The stories of Evelyn Byrd's London experiences bring many noted names
into the train of those who did her honour: the Lords Chesterfield and
Oxford, and Pope at the height of his glory, and the cynical Lord
Hervey, and Beau Nash, the autocrat of Bath. There should be mentioned
too that old courtier (whoever he was) whose admiration was expressed
in the rather mild witticism, "I no longer wonder that young men are
anxious to go to Virginia to study ornithology, since such beautiful
_birds_ are to be found there."

It was in the midst of this London gayety that Evelyn Byrd so literally
met her fate in meeting the grandson of Lord Peterborough, Charles
Mordaunt. The story of that unhappy love affair--the devoted pair, the
opposition of the maiden's father, and the separation of the
lovers--has become an oft-told but ever attractive romance.

About 1726, Colonel Byrd returned with his family to Virginia; and it
was then, it seems, that he built the present mansion at Westover, and
entered upon the almost sumptuous life there that was to make the
plantation famous.

And Westover was a worthy setting for the worthy Colonel. Without the
home, were lawns and gardens beautiful with native and imported trees,
shrubs, and vines; and within the home, spacious rooms with rich
furnishings and art treasures gathered in England and on the Continent.
Here too was one of the largest and most valuable collections of books
in the colonies. As a matter of course