on, and then continued coolly, “the fact is Laura, our romance is played
out.”
Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried,
“George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you.
I will wait any where. I can’t go back to Hawkeye.”
“Well, go where you like. Perhaps,” continued he with a sneer, “you
would do as well to wait here, for another colonel.”
Laura’s brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. “What does this
mean? Where are you going?”
“It means,” said the officer, in measured words, “that you haven’t
anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New
Orleans.”
“It’s a lie, George, it’s a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall
follow you to New Orleans.”
“Perhaps my wife might not like it!”
Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a
cry, and fell senseless on the floor.
When she came to herself the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood
at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her
heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands
of the only man she had ever loved?
She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his
mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the
engagement with Col. Selby had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long
time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could
conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an
added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is
there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the
face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible
experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her
guilt or her innocence?
Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart.
That was all.
CHAPTER XIX.
Mr. Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the
City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson had been kind enough to say that it
didn’t make any difference whether he was with the corps or not; and
although Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington Hawkins
that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the lay-out with
reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long
letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out, and to let him
know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence.
Meantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye, as he did in any
society where fortune cast him and he had the slightest opportunity to
expand. Indeed the talents of a rich and accomplished young fellow like
Harry were not likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land
operator, engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles
of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with
public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the
banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the
language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura
Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him, and to
endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes of her
attractions.
“Gad,” says Harry to the Colonel, “she’s a superb creature, she’d make a
stir in New York, money or no money. There are men I know would give her
a railroad or an opera house, or whatever she wanted–at least they’d
promise.”
Harry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything else in the
world he wanted, and he half resolved to appropriate Miss Laura, during
his stay in Hawkeye. Perhaps the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was
offended at Harry’s talk, for he replied,
“No nonsense, Mr. Brierly. Nonsense won’t do in Hawkeye, not with my
friends. The Hawkins’ blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee.