Was woman ever prudent when she loved?  Laura went to Harding, the neighbors supposed to nurse Washington who had fallen ill there.  Her engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter of pride to her family.  Mrs. Hawkins would have told the first inquirer that.  Laura had gone to be married; but Laura had cautioned her; she did not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband; let the news come back after she was married.

So she traveled to Harding on the pretence we have mentioned, and was married.  She was married, but something must have happened on that very day or the next that alarmed her.  Washington did not know then or after what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it.  Whatever cruel suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away, and not let it cloud her happiness.

Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and Laura was in a measure lost sight of—­indeed, everyone had troubles enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors.

Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did not or would not see it.  It was the passion of her life, the time when her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers.  Was her husband ever cold or indifferent?  She shut her eyes to everything but her sense of possession of her idol.

Three months passed.  One morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered South, and must go within two hours.

“I can be ready,” said Laura, cheerfully.

“But I can’t take you.  You must go back to Hawkeye.”

“Can’t-take-me?” 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.