The Gilded Age


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Yet Laura was not without friends, and some of them very influential too.  
She had in keeping a great many secrets and a great many reputations,  
perhaps. Who shall set himself up to judge human motives. Why, indeed,  
might we not feel pity for a woman whose brilliant career had been so  
suddenly extinguished in misfortune and crime? Those who had known her  
so well in Washington might find it impossible to believe that the  
fascinating woman could have had murder in her heart, and would readily  
give ear to the current sentimentality about the temporary aberration of  
mind under the stress of personal calamity.  
Senator Dilworthy, was greatly shocked, of course, but he was full of  
charity for the erring.  
"We shall all need mercy," he said. "Laura as an inmate of my family was  
a most exemplary female, amiable, affectionate and truthful, perhaps too  
fond of gaiety, and neglectful of the externals of religion, but a woman  
of principle. She may have had experiences of which I am ignorant, but  
she could not have gone to this extremity if she had been in her own  
right mind."  
To the Senator's credit be it said, he was willing to help Laura and her  
family in this dreadful trial. She, herself, was not without money, for  
the Washington lobbyist is not seldom more fortunate than the Washington  
claimant, and she was able to procure a good many luxuries to mitigate  
the severity of her prison life. It enabled her also to have her own  
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Quick Jump
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