Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/169

 *ing, did not appear like romantic incidents in life, but as cruel blows of fate to him.

But Helena de Peyster was a pleasant girl, and her mother was gentle, amiable, and well-bred. They had one of the gayest and most charming houses in Washington, and entertained half the diplomatic corps at dinner during every week. They would gladly have had Pembroke oftener. He came in to quiet dinners with them, assumed a fatherly air with Helena, and liked them cordially. They were good to Miles too, who sometimes went to them timidly on rainy afternoons when he would not be likely to find anybody else.

So went the world with Pembroke for some years until one evening, going to his modest lodgings, he found a letter with Colonel Berkeley's big red seal on it awaiting him.

He and Miles dined—then Pembroke, over the wine, opened the Colonel's billet. It was brief.

",—Olivia and I are coming to Washington to spend the winter. I have not been to the cursed town since the winter before the war, when Wigfall was in the Senate, and Floyd was Secretary of War. John B. Floyd was one of the greatest men the State of Virginia ever produced. Now, I want to go to a decent tavern—but Olivia, who is a girl of spirit, won't do it. She insists on having a furnished house, and I've engaged one through an agent. Don't suppose it will suit, but Olivia swears it will. We'll be up in the course of