CHAPTER XLI.

Henry Brierly was at the Dilworthy’s constantly and on such terms of intimacy that he came and went without question.  The Senator was not an inhospitable man, he liked to have guests in his house, and Harry’s gay humor and rattling way entertained him; for even the most 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, you’ll care for.  Your being with him so much is the town talk, that’s all?”