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 human breast. Volkonsky gone, he began to think with a certain remorse of Elise. The thought of her misery gave him pain.

Suddenly he remembered the concert. He recollected that Miles had engaged for both of them to go with Colonel Berkeley and Olivia. But for Miles, he would have excused himself from his engagement—but the boy could seldom be induced to go anywhere, and he had seemed eager to go to this place—but not without Olivia. For she had the gentle tact to make him feel at ease. She screened him from the curious and unthinking—he did not feel lost and abashed with Olivia as he did without her. So Pembroke finished his dinner hurriedly, and went back to his lodgings, where Miles was awaiting him, after having dined alone—and in a little while they were at the Colonel's house, where Olivia came out on her father's arm, and the big landau, brought from Isleham, with Petrarch on the box as of old, rolled along toward the British Legation and took its place in line.

When they reached the brilliantly lighted ball-room, where a concert stage had been erected and chairs arranged in rows, Pembroke took Miles' usual place at Olivia's side. He always felt with her, the charm of a sweet reasonableness and refinement. After the man he had talked with, and the thoughts and evil passions he had just experienced, it was refreshment to sit beside Olivia Berkeley, to look into her clear eyes and to listen to her soft voice.