And he promised, and lied, and invented fresh excuses
for delay, like a cowardly gambler and roue as he
was, fearing to break with her, and half the time
unwilling to give her up.
“That woman doesn’t know what fear is,”
he said to himself, “and she watches me like
a hawk.”
He told his wife that this woman was a lobbyist, whom
he had to tolerate and use in getting through his
claims, and that he should pay her and have done with
her, when he succeeded.
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 horse.
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.”
