Elizabeth, his daughter, had never shared her mother's ambitions.

Perhaps because she had always had it she cared nothing for society.

She was well content to ride about the farm with her father, whom she greatly admired, and at whose eccentricities she only smiled.
In this agreeable comradeship with his daughter, General Herbert had lived through the period of his bereavement with very tolerable comfort.
He had rendered the dead the dead's due of regretful tenderness; but Elizabeth never asked him when he was going to make his reentry into politics; and she never reproached him with having wasted the very best years of his life in trying to make four hundred acres of scientifically farmed land show a profit, a feat he had not yet accomplished.
Quitting the highway, North turned in at two stone pillars that marked the entrance to Idle Hour and walked rapidly up the maple-lined driveway to the great arched vestibule that gave to the house the appearance of a Norman-French chateau.
Answering the summons of the bell, a maid ushered him into the long drawing-room, and into the presence of the general and his daughter.

The former received North with a perceptible shade of reserve.

He knew more about the young man than he would have cared to tell his daughter, since he believed it would be better for her to make her own discoveries where North was concerned.