“So that you might have something to remind
you of me when you wished to laugh at my foolishness?”
“Oh, by no means, no! Simply that I might
remember that I had once assisted to discomfort you,
and be reminded to do so no more.”
Laura looked up, and scanned his face a moment.
She was about to break the twig, but she hesitated
and said:
“If I were sure that you—”
She threw the spray away, and continued: “This
is silly! We will change the subject. No,
do not insist—I must have my way in this.”
Then Mr. Buckstone drew off his forces and proceeded
to make a wily advance upon the fortress under cover
of carefully—contrived artifices and stratagems
of war. But he contended with an alert and suspicious
enemy; and so at the end of two hours it was manifest
to him that he had made but little progress.
Still, he had made some; he was sure of that.
Laura sat alone and communed with herself;
“He is fairly hooked, poor thing. I can
play him at my leisure and land him when I choose.
He was all ready to be caught, days and days ago
—I saw that, very well. He will vote
for our bill—no fear about that; and moreover
he will work for it, too, before I am done with him.
If he had a woman’s eyes he would have noticed
that the spray of box had grown three inches since
he first gave it to me, but a man never sees anything
and never suspects. If I had shown him a whole
bush he would have thought it was the same.
Well, it is a good night’s work: the committee
is safe. But this is a desperate game I am playing
in these days —a wearing, sordid, heartless
game. If I lose, I lose everything—even
myself. And if I win the game, will it be worth
its cost after all? I do not know. Sometimes
I doubt. Sometimes I half wish I had not begun.
But no matter; I have begun, and I will never turn
back; never while I live.”
Mr. Buckstone indulged in a reverie as he walked homeward:
“She is shrewd and deep, and plays her cards
with considerable discretion—but she will
lose, for all that. There is no hurry; I shall
come out winner, all in good time. She is the
most beautiful woman in the world; and she surpassed
herself to-night. I suppose I must vote for
that bill, in the end maybe; but that is not a matter
of much consequence the government can stand it.
She is bent on capturing me, that is plain; but she
will find by and by that what she took for a sleeping
garrison was an ambuscade.”
Now
this surprising news caus’d her fall in ’a
trance,
Life
as she were dead, no limbs she could advance,
Then
her dear brother came, her from the ground he took
And
she spake up and said, O my poor heart is broke.
The Barnardcastle
Tragedy.
“Don’t you think he is distinguished looking?”
