edly miscellaneous, and largely made up of romances and
fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of
life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism. From
these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture
joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in
society as she read of it; and along with these ideas she imbibed other
very crude ones in regard to the emancipation of woman.

There were also other books-histories, biographies of distinguished
people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and
Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed, and appropriated therefrom
what was to her liking. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a
fashion, studied so diligently as Laura. She passed for an accomplished
girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was, judged by any
standard near her.

During the war there came to Hawkeye a confederate officer, Col. Selby,
who was stationed there for a time, in command of that district. He was
a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University
of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed,
and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and
adventure.

To find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a
piece of good luck upon which Col. Selby congratulated himself. He was
studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which
she was unaccustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen
one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in
conversation, so engaging in manner.

It is a long story; unfortunately it is an old story, and it need not be
dwelt on. Laura loved him, and believed that his love for her was as
pure and deep as her own. She worshipped him and would have counted her
life a little thing to give him, if he would only love her and let her
feed the hunger of her heart upon him.

The passion possessed her whole being, and lifted her up, till she seemed
to walk on air. It was all true, then, the romances she had read, the
bliss of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how
blithesome the world was, how jocund with love; the birds sang it, the
trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her
feet strewed the way as for a bridal march.

When the Colonel went away they