The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

“With you? Oh no. I’m angry with the cruel world, which, pursues an

independent woman as it never does a man. I’m grateful to you Harry;

I’m grateful to you for telling me of that odious man.”

And she rose from her chair and gave him her pretty hand, which the silly

fellow took, and kissed and clung to. And he said many silly things,

before she disengaged herself gently, and left him, saying it was time to

dress, for dinner.

And Harry went away, excited, and a little hopeful, but only a little.

The happiness was only a gleam, which departed and left him thoroughly,

miserable. She never would love him, and she was going to the devil,

besides. He couldn’t shut his eyes to what he saw, nor his ears to what

he heard of her.

What had come over this trilling young lady-killer? It was a pity to see

such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel. Was there something good in him,

after all, that had been touched? He was in fact madly in love with this

woman.

It is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy

one. It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough. If he

deserved punishment, what more would you have? Perhaps this love was

kindling a new heroism in him.

He saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did

not believe the worst he heard of her. He loved her too passionately to

credit that for a moment. And it seemed to him that if he could compel

her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him,

and that he could save her. His love was so far ennobled, and become a

very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye. Whether he ever

thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up

himself, is doubtful. Such a pitch of virtue does not occur often in

real life, especially in such natures as Harry’s, whose generosity and

unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or

principles.

He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter,

pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her

as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks

she ran of compromising herself in many ways.

Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other

days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the

thought, “They are all alike.”

Harry was in the habit of writing to Philip freely, and boasting also

about his doings, as he could not help doing and remain himself.

Mixed up with his own exploits, and his daily triumphs as a lobbyist,

especially in the matter of the new University, in which Harry was to

have something handsome, were amusing sketches of Washington society,

hints about Dilworthy, stories about Col. Sellers, who had become a well-

known character, and wise remarks upon the machinery of private

legislation for the public-good, which greatly entertained Philip in his

convalescence.

Laura’s name occurred very often in these letters, at first in casual

mention as the belle of the season, carrying everything before her with

her wit and beauty, and then more seriously, as if Harry did not exactly

like so much general admiration of her, and was a little nettled by her

treatment of him.

This was so different from Harry’s usual tone about women, that Philip

wondered a good deal over it. Could it be possible that he was seriously

affected? Then came stories about Laura, town talk, gossip which Harry

denied the truth of indignantly; but he was evidently uneasy, and at

length wrote in such miserable spirits that Philip asked him squarely

what the trouble was; was he in love?

Upon this, Harry made a clean breast of it, and told Philip all he knew

about the Selby affair, and Laura’s treatment of him, sometimes

encouraging him–and then throwing him off, and finally his belief that

she would go, to the bad if something was not done to arouse her from her

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