Our friend Archie, however, despite his seeming indifference, had not forgotten. He had been wounded to the quick by her preference for his rival; and the manner in which she appeared to rejoice that no previous troth-plight would prevent her accepting Philip, made him feel how little she valued true affection, when compared with a dashing exterior, or a greater share of personal beauty. “Let her go! the vain, cold-hearted girl!” he mentally ejaculated, as they parted on that eventful night. “Let her try if he _can_ love her half so well as I do—as I _have_ done,” he added more bitterly. “Fool that I was, to believe she ever cared for me. That conceited peacock! I wish—” and Archie, the best-tempered, kindest-hearted creature in the world, conceived from that moment such an unutterable dislike and contempt for all navy officers, and navy buttons, as to wish, in his awakened ire, that Philip Greyson was on the coast of Africa, or the deep waters of the Pacific. But when misfortune came, Archie’s resentment at once gave way. Sophy was in sorrow, and he longed to go and assure her that his love was brighter than any skies could darken. But had she not rejected his love? Then why should he urge it now? Philip was still at Brookville, and might follow up the advantage he had gained; and Archie would not for the world have interposed his own wishes. Pride, therefore, more than anger, kept him back from any other attention than common civility required; and he resolved by every means in his power to drive away the remembrance of the past, and wait as calmly as he might the issue of future events. While such was the state of affairs with Archie, Sophy Middleton, in her new home, was learning many valuable lessons, which, perhaps, she had never gained but for these untoward circumstances. Lessons of patience and submission, of industry, activity, and economy; and though she did not recover her usual flow of spirits, still, as the months rolled on, and her employments increased, a tolerable degree of cheerfulness returned also. She found pleasure in her garden-beds and flower-borders; pleasure in leading her good old grandfather about through the house and ground, making him familiar with every thing, and instructing him how to find his way, unaided, to the arm-chair in the porch; pleasure, too, in devising plans with her grandmother for the better arrangement of their little household, that pleasure which ever comes with the faithful discharge of duty; and if Sophy could not forget, if she still remembered Archie’s slighted love with bitter self-reproach, or Philip’s short-lived admiration with mortification and disdain, she was still calm, and patient, and resigned; less gay, perhaps, but not less loveable or lovely.