“Oh, yes,” replied that martyr to business, “it’s all well enough, if you don’t have too much of it, but it only has one object.”

“What is that?”

“If a woman doesn’t know, it’s useless to tell her.  What do you suppose I am staying in Hawkeye for, week after week, when I ought to be with my corps?”

“I suppose it’s your business with Col.  Sellers about Napoleon, you’ve always told me so,” answered Laura, with a look intended to contradict her words.

“And now I tell you that is all arranged, I suppose you’ll tell me I ought to go?”

“Harry!” exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting her pretty hand rest there a moment.  “Why should I want you to go away?  The only person in Hawkeye who understands me.”

“But you refuse to understand me,” replied Harry, flattered but still petulant.  “You are like an iceberg, when we are alone.”

Laura looked up with wonder in her great eyes, and something like a blush suffusing her face, followed by a look of langour that penetrated Harry’s heart as if it had been longing.

“Did I ever show any want of confidence in you, Harry?” And she gave him her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion—­something in her manner told him that he must be content with that favor.

It was always so.  She excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his passion and restrained it, and wound him in her toils day by day.  To what purpose?  It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power over men.

Laura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially about the luxurious society in which Mr. Brierly moved when he was at home.  It pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it.

“You should be a winter in Washington,” Harry said.

“But I have no acquaintances there.”

“Don’t know any of the families of the congressmen?  They like to have a pretty woman staying with them.”

“Not one.”

“Suppose Col.  Sellers should, have business there; say, about this Columbus River appropriation?”

“Sellers!” and Laura laughed.

“You needn’t laugh.  Queerer things have happened.  Sellers knows everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter.  He’d introduce you to Washington life quick enough.  It doesn’t need a crowbar to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia.  It’s democratic, Washington is.  Money or beauty will open any door.  If I were a handsome woman, I shouldn’t want any better place than the capital to pick up a prince or a fortune.”

“Thank you,” replied Laura.  “But I prefer the quiet of home, and the love of those I know;” and her face wore a look of sweet contentment and unworldliness that finished Mr. Harry Brierly for the day.

Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground, and bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in her mind until she had built up a plan on it, and almost a career for herself.  Why not, she said, why shouldn’t I do as other women have done?  She took the first opportunity to see Col.  Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington visit.  How was he getting on with his navigation scheme, would it be likely to take him from home to Jefferson City; or to Washington, perhaps?