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It took two or three days for Pembroke to recover from his fatigue and excitement. Perhaps he did not hasten his complete recuperation. It was surely pleasanter to come down to a twelve o'clock breakfast, served piping hot by Petrarch, with Olivia to pour his coffee for him, with that morning freshness which is so becoming to a woman, than the loneliness of Malvern, with poor Miles' sad face and pathetic effort to forget himself and the wreck of his boyish life. Cave had taken the boy to his cabin in the pine woods to stay some days, so that there was nothing to call Pembroke back home. Miles was happier than for a long time. Cave spoke to him with a certain bracing encouragement that Olivia's pitiful sympathy and his brother's sharp distress lacked. There was more of the salt of common sense in what Cave said than in Olivia's unspoken consolation, which much as it charmed the boy, sometimes left him sadder than it found him. She was so sorry for him that she could not always disguise it.

So a few days went on, and Pembroke began to find Olivia every hour pleasanter, more winning—until one night in his own room, after Olivia had played to him half the evening and had read to him the other half, he took himself to task. In the first