her father very much, but that cheerful, healthful and robustious old person hardly supplied the craving to love and tend which is innate in every woman's heart. It is at this point in their development that women of inferior nature begin to deteriorate. Not so with Olivia Berkeley. Life puzzled and displeased her. She found herself full of energy, with many gifts and accomplishments, condemned in the flower of her youth to the dull routine of a provincial life in the country. She could not understand it—neither could she sit down in hopeless resignation and accept it. She bestirred herself. Books there were in plenty at Isleham—the piano was an inestimable comforter. She weathered the storm of ennui in this manner, and came to possess a certain content—to control the outward signs of inward restlessless. Meanwhile she read and studied feverishly, foolishly imagining that knowing a great number of facts would make her happy. Of course it did not—but it made her less unhappy.
As for Pembroke, the fate which had fallen hard on Olivia Berkeley had fondly favored him. He was not only elected to Congress, but he became something of a man after he got there. The House of Representatives is a peculiar body—peculiarly unfavorable to age, and peculiarly favorable to youth. Pembroke, still smarting under his mortification, concluded to dismiss thoughts of any woman from his mind for the present, and devote himself to the work before him. With that view,
