A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN The house where the Severances lived, and had lived for half a century, was built by Lucius Quintus Severence, Alabama planter, suddenly and, for the antebellum days, notably rich through a cotton speculation.

When he built, Washington had no distinctly fashionable quarter; the neighborhood was then as now small, cheap wooden structures where dwelt in genteel discomfort the families of junior Department clerks.

Lucius Quintus chose the site partly for the view, partly because spacious grounds could be had at a nominal figure, chiefly because part of his conception of aristocracy was to dwell in grandeur among the humble.

The Severence place, enclosed by a high English-like wall of masonry, filled the whole huge square.

On each of its four sides it put in sheepish and chop-fallen countenance a row of boarding houses.