of her intention—that I found by accident, among her papers, this carefully-studied plan for a pleasure-house at Hopewood.”
He paused again, and unrolling the blue-print, held it up before his audience.
“You cannot, at this distance,” he went on, “see all the admirable details of her plan; see how beautifully they were imagined, how carefully and intelligently elaborated. She who conceived them longed to see beauty everywhere—it was her dearest wish to bestow it on her people here. And her ardent imagination outran the bounds of practical possibility. We cannot give you, in its completeness, the beautiful thing she had imagined the great terraces, the marble porches, the fountains, lily-tanks, and cloisters. But you will see that, wherever it was possible though in humbler materials, and on a smaller scale—we have faithfully followed her design; and when presently you go through this building, and when, hereafter, you find health and refreshment and diversion here, I ask you to remember the beauty she dreamed of giving you, and to let the thought of it make her memory beautiful among you and among your children. . .”
Justine had listened with deepening amazement. She was seated so close to her husband that she had recognized the blue-print the moment he unrolled it. There was no mistaking its origin—it was simply the plan of
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