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The villa occupied by the Countess van Renslaer stood a little distance from the Hague, on the Ryswick road, amid a large pleasure-garden in the old Dutch style, a marvel of prettiness, with its meandering walks, fantastically-cut parterres, box borders, pyramids of flower-pots, and tiny fish-pond where the carp and perch were often fed by the white hands of Dolores.
It had more than one rose-bowered _zomerhuis_ hidden among the shrubbery, and admirably adapted for contemplation or flirtation. It was the month of May now, when the tulips and hyacinths, potted in _jardinières_ full of light sand, were in all their beauty -- flowers for which, in the days of the _tulip-mania_, a hundred florins had been paid for a single bulb.