So the General wrote and stopped the proceedings of his lawyers.
And Drusilla wrote and told hers to go ahead as fast as they saw fit.
But it was April before any measure of importance was taken. Then Messrs. Heneage & Kent, who had been as active and as artful as detectives in the business, wrote to inform their client that they had discovered that the present proprietor of Cedarwood, who was a person of very restless disposition and unsettled habits, had become dissatisfied with the place and was anxious to dispose of it, and would do so immediately if he could sell it for as much as he gave for it. Now, as Alexander Lyon had sold the estate at some sacrifice during his fit of fury, it was therefore supposed to be a good bargain. The lawyers wrote to ask further instructions from their client.
Drusilla by return mail directed them to buy Cedarwood immediately, as her great desire was to possess it as soon as possible, on any terms. She also requested them to buy as much of the wooded land around Cedarwood as they could get at a reasonable, or even at a slightly unreasonable price, as she intended to improve the place as much as it would admit of, and wished, among other things, to have a little home park.
It was well for this young Fortunata that her attorneys had much more prudence than herself. They were not disposed to pay fancy prices for fancy places, even when they were spending their client’s money instead of their own, and getting a good percentage on it. So they managed matters so well that, by the first of May, the whole business was successfully completed.
Cedarwood, with its original twenty-five acres of partially cleared land, was purchased for twenty thousand dollars, and one hundred acres of wild forest land lying all around it was purchased for thirty thousand—the whole property costing fifty thousand.
“A very excellent investment,” wrote Heneage & Kent, “even as a mere country seat; but the land so near the city is rapidly rising in value; and when you may wish to do so in future years, you may divide it into half a hundred villa sites, and sell each part for as much money as you now pay for the whole.”
But Drusilla was not thinking of land speculations, so she ran to her friends and, after telling them of the completion of the purchase of Cedarwood, she exclaimed:
“And now we shall have such a beautiful home near the city to receive us all when we go to Washington to spend the winter. It will be so much better than a hotel or boarding-house in the city. It is only half an hour’s drive from the Capitol. We can live there so comfortable, and as quiet as we please when we wish to be so, and enter into all the amusements of the city we like when we wish to do so. It will only be to start half an hour earlier when we go to a party or a play, half an hour earlier from Cedarwood than we should from a hotel in the city, I mean. And then when we leave a brilliant ball-room or opera-house, it will be so pleasant to come to a sweet, quiet home in the woods, instead of a noisy, unwholesome hotel—don’t you think so, dear uncle?” she said, appealing to the General.
“Yes, my darling, I do,” answered the old gentleman.