The influence of Alix the First was expressed in the modelling
of house and grounds, the result being a picturesque place with a
distinctly English atmosphere, set well back from the highway in
the heart of a grove of oaks,--a substantial house of brick with
a steep red tile roof, white window casements, and a wide brick
terrace guarded by a low ivy-draped wall. English ivy swathed the
two corners of the house facing the road, mounting high upon the
tall red chimneys at the ends. There were flower-beds below the
terrace, and off to the right there was an old-fashioned garden.
The stables were at the foot of the hill some distance to the rear
of the house.
The village of Windomville lay below, hugging the river, a relic of
the days when steamboats plied up and down the stream and railways
were remote, a sleepy, insignificant, intensely rural hamlet of
less than six hundred inhabitants. Its one claim to distinction was
the venerable but still active ferry that laboured back and forth
across the river. Of secondary importance was the ancient dock,
once upon a time the stopping place of steamboats, but now a rotten,
rickety obstruction upon which the downstream drift lodged in an
unsightly mass.
In the solid red-brick house among the oaks Alix the Third had spent
her childhood days. She was taken to England when she was eight
by her haunted grandfather, not only to receive the bringing-up of
an English child, but because David Windom's courage was breaking
down.
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