Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. "I can't live
without you. You said-----"

"O bother what I said,"--and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it
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