And Harry went away, excited, and a little hopeful, but only a little.  The happiness was only a gleam, which departed and left him thoroughly, miserable.  She never would love him, and she was going to the devil, besides.  He couldn’t shut his eyes to what he saw, nor his ears to what he heard of her.

What had come over this thrilling young lady-killer?  It was a pity to see such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel.  Was there something good in him, after all, that had been touched?  He was in fact madly in love with this woman.

It is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy one.  It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough.  If he deserved punishment, what more would you have?  Perhaps this love was kindling a new heroism in him.

He saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did not believe the worst he heard of her.  He loved her too passionately to credit that for a moment.  And it seemed to him that if he could compel her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him, and that he could save her.  His love was so far ennobled, and become a very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye.  Whether he ever thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up himself, is doubtful.  Such a pitch of virtue does not occur often in real life, especially in such natures as Harry’s, whose generosity and unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or principles.

He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter, pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks she ran of compromising herself in many ways.

Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the thought, “They are all alike.”

Harry was in the habit of writing to Philip freely, and boasting also about his doings, as he could not help doing and remain himself.  Mixed up with his own exploits, and his daily triumphs as a lobbyist, especially in the matter of the new University, in which Harry was to have something handsome, were amusing sketches of Washington society, hints about Dilworthy, stories about Col.  Sellers, who had become a well-known character, and wise remarks upon the machinery of private legislation for the public-good, which greatly entertained Philip in his convalescence.

Laura’s name occurred very often in these letters, at first in casual mention as the belle of the season, carrying everything before her with her wit and beauty, and then more seriously, as if Harry did not exactly like so much general admiration of her, and was a little nettled by her treatment of him.

This was so different from Harry’s usual tone about women, that Philip wondered a good deal over it.  Could it be possible that he was seriously affected?  Then came stories about Laura, town talk, gossip which Harry denied the truth of indignantly; but he was evidently uneasy, and at length wrote in such miserable spirits that Philip asked him squarely what the trouble was; was he in love?