When dinner was over and General Brandon had gone out to pay his weekly visit to his paralyzed comrade, Elizabeth went upstairs to a small back room, called by courtesy the study. Here were General Brandon’s few books; he was not, and never had been, a man of books, but he liked to be considered bookish. There was in the room an open grate fire, a student’s lamp, and some old–fashioned tables and easy–chairs. To this room Elizabeth had succeeded in imparting an air of comfort. She sat down before the fire to spend the evening alone, as she had spent so many evenings alone in the last eighteen months, and would, she feared, continue to spend her evenings for the rest of her life. She had expected to find her life in Washington dull, but the weeks she had been at home had been duller than she had thought possible. Her father’s old friends had called upon her, but they were all staid and elderly persons, and the circle had grown pitifully small in her ten years of absence. Those ten years had practically obliterated her own acquaintances in the ever changing population of Washington, and the few persons left in the gay world whom she knew, like Mrs. Luttrell, it was plain that her father did not expect her to cultivate. One resource—reading—occurred to her on this particular evening. She had a mind well fitted for books, but she had never been thrown with bookish people, except Pelham, and reading had formed no essential part of her life. Pelham was a man of great intelligence, and a reader; but both his intelligence and his reading were confined to his profession. No matter where Elizabeth’s thinking began, Pelham was sure to come into it somewhere. She started up from her chair as the recollection of him, which always hovered near her, took shape in thought and almost in speech, and going to the book–case took out the first volume her hand fell upon. It was an old translation of Herodotus, and Elizabeth, determined upon a mental opiate, opened it at random and read on resolutely. She fell upon that wonderful story of Cyrus, the reputed son of Mithradates the herdsman; and in following the grandly simple old narrative, told with so much of art, of grace, of convincing perspicacity, that not even a translation can wholly destroy its majestic beauty, Elizabeth lost herself in the shadowy, ancient past. She was roused by Serena’s voice and Serena’s hand, as black as the Ethiopians in Herodotus’s time, who worshipped no other gods save Jupiter and Bacchus. Serena produced a card. It was simple and correct, and read: “Mr. James Clavering,” with the address. “It is Senator Clavering,” said Elizabeth, in a moment. “Tell him that General Brandon is not at home.” “De gent’mun seh he got er ’p’intment wid de Gin’l, an’ he gwine ter wait for him. I t’ink, Miss ’Liz’beth, you better lemme ax him up heah. De parlor is jes’ freezin’ col’,” answered Serena, who never forgot that people should be made comfortable.