ost devout men and
busy statesmen must have hours of relaxation.

Harry himself believed that he was of great service in the University
business, and that the success of the scheme depended upon him to a great
degree. He spent many hours in talking it over with the Senator after
dinner. He went so far as to consider whether it would be worth his
while to take the professorship of civil engineering in the new
institution.

But it was not the Senator's society nor his dinners--at which this
scapegrace remarked that there was too much grace and too little wine
--which attracted him to the house. The fact was the poor fellow hung
around there day after day for the chance of seeing Laura for five
minutes at a time. For her presence at dinner he would endure the long
bore of the Senator's talk afterwards, while Laura was off at some
assembly, or excused herself on the plea of fatigue. Now and then he
accompanied her to some reception, and rarely, on off nights, he was
blessed with her company in the parlor, when he sang, and was chatty and
vivacious and performed a hundred little tricks of imitation and
ventriloquism, and made himself as entertaining as a man could be.

It puzzled him not a little that all his fascinations seemed to go for so
little with Laura; it was beyond his experience with women. Sometimes
Laura was exceedingly kind and petted him a little, and took the trouble
to exert her powers of pleasing, and to entangle him deeper and deeper.
But this, it angered him afterwards to think, was in private; in public
she was beyond his reach, and never gave occasion to the suspicion that
she had any affair with him. He was never permitted to achieve the
dignity of a serious flirtation with her in public.

"Why do you treat me so?" he once said, reproachfully.

"Treat you how?" asked Laura in a sweet voice, lifting her eyebrows.

"You know well enough. You let other fellows monopolize you in society,
and you are as indifferent to me as if we were strangers."

"Can I help it if they are attentive, can I be rude? But we are such old
friends, Mr. Brierly, that I didn't suppose you would be jealous."

"I think I must be a very old friend, then, by your conduct towards me.
By the same rule I should judge that Col. Selby must be very new."

Laura looked up quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to
such impertinence, but she only said, "Well, what of Col. Selby,
sauce-box?"

"Nothing, probably,