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Colonel stepped towards her, but she waved him back, as hot anger again
coursed through her veins, and said,
"And you dare come with her, here, and tell me of it, here and mock me
with it! And you think I will have it; George? You think I will let you
live with that woman? You think I am as powerless as that day I fell
dead at your feet?"
She raged now. She was in a tempest of excitement. And she advanced
towards him with a threatening mien. She would kill me if she could,
thought the Colonel; but he thought at the same moment, how beautiful she
is. He had recovered his head now. She was lovely when he knew her,
then a simple country girl, Now she was dazzling, in the fullness of ripe
womanhood, a superb creature, with all the fascination that a woman of
the world has for such a man as Col. Selby. Nothing of this was lost on
him. He stepped quickly to her, grasped both her hands in his, and said,
"Laura, stop! think! Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate!
What can I do? I am broken by the war. I have lost everything almost.
I had as lief be dead and done with it."
The Colonel spoke with a low remembered voice that thrilled through
Laura. He was looking into her eyes as he had looked in those old days,
when no birds of all those that sang in the groves where they walked sang
a note of warning. He was wounded. He had been punished. Her strength
forsook her with her rage, and she sank upon a chair, sobbing,
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