war for war's sake; they possessed that feudal facalty,
so incomprehensible in the middle ages, the power of making those who
suffered most by it believe in it too, and sacrifice themselves for it.

The people--Jack sagaciously remarked, in discussing the topic with
Olympia--seemed made for such a climate, rather than made by it. They
would have been out of place in the bleak autumn blasts, and wan,
colorless seasons of Acredale, where the sun, bleary and dim, furtively
skirted the low horizon from November until April, as if ashamed to be
identified with the glorious courser that rode the radiant summer sky.
Here the sun came up of a morning--a little tardy, 'tis true, but quite
in the manner of the people--warm and engaging, and when he went down in
the afternoon he covered the western sky with a roseate mantle that
fairly kept out the chill of the Northern night. "No wonder," Jack said
to his sister, watching this daily spectacle--"no wonder these people
are warm, impulsive, and even energetic; here is an Italian climate
without the enervating languor of that sensuous sunshine."

The Atterbury house was the gayest in Richmond. Mrs. Atterbury, though
the mother of a son in the army and a daughter with a coterie of her own
in society, insisted on maintaining the leadership she had long held
among the social forces of the capital. "All Richmond," and that meant a
good deal in a city whose women had been adored for beauty and wit on
two continents, received Mrs. Atterbury's bidding to her drawing-room
with proud alacrity. Never had her "teas," her _musicales_, her
receptions, and _fetes_ been merrier or more convivial than during this
memorable autumn that Jack and Olympia passed as prisoners of war. It
was generally believed that the brother and sister were occult agents of
the Federal power, negotiating with the Davis Cabinet, and Jack's
whimsical sobriety of speech and manner, contrasting with his former
high animal spirits, carried out the notion of his being a secret
ambassador.

It was at a reception given to the Cabinet by Mrs. Atterbury that the
rumor of this accredited function came to Jack's ears. "All Richmond"
was among the guests. Olympia, in spite of her abhorrence of the cause,
couldn't resist a glow of sympathetic admiration of the women who, in
dress, in speech, in tact, in all the artifices which make feminine
diplomacy so potent an agency in statecraft, bent every faculty to
inspire confidence in the