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,