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and flame-colored flowers, dark-leaved Arabian jessamines, with their silvery stars, geraniums, luxuriant roses bending beneath their heavy abundance of flow- ers, golden jessamines, lemon-scented verbenum, all united their bloom and fra- grance, while here and there a mystic old aloe, with its strange, massive leaves, sat looking like some hoary old enchanter, sitting in weird grandeur among the more perishable bloom and fragrance around it. The galleries that surrounded the court were festooned with a curtain of some kind of Moorish stuff, and could be drawn down at pleasure, to exclude the beams of the sun. On the whole, the appearance of the place was luxurious and ro- mantic. As the carriage drove in, Eva seemed like a bird ready to burst from a cage, with the wild eagerness of her delight. “O, isn’t it beautiful, lovely! my own dear, darling home!” she said to Miss Ophelia. “Isn’t it beautiful?” “’Tis a pretty place,” said Miss Ophelia, as she alighted; “though it looks rather old and heathenish to me.” Tom got down from the carriage, and looked about with an air of calm, still enjoyment. The negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his heart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion which, rudely indulged by an un- trained taste, draws on them the ridicule of the colder and more correct white race. |