I visited Laura repeatedly during the subsequent six months. I became deeply interested in her position, and more than once ventured to hint, jestingly, to her husband the duty of watching with a vigilant eye over so precious and delicate a flower. He appeared perfectly insensible to all insinuations upon the subject, and with unbounded confidence in, and as much attachment for Laura as his nature was capable of feeling, he became more and more wedded to his dream of political ambition and popular applause. He was a member of most of the societies that were in any degree connected with philanthropy, and of all on the political side to which he was attached; and thus, night after night, week after week, and month after month, he absented himself from the society of his wife.
But why prolong the story? Hour after hour, the conviction grew stronger in the mind of Laura that she had mistaken the sentiments of her husband. He had, she now believed, never loved her. He had either deceived her or been himself deceived. It was clear that he shunned her society, and although kind and obliging, this course was attributed rather to his tone of mind and moral principle than to a warmer and fonder emotion of his heart. She too had been mistaken. At least she thought so. The feeling that had induced her to become his wife was not love; not that deep and absorbing passion, that flame and fire of the soul, that she now could feel and appreciate. He was her cousin; she had known him long; he had ever been kind to her; her parents had urged her marriage, and she had been misled! But, alas! how had he deserted her! How had she been neglected! How cold had he become! How indifferent! What a contrast to St. Clair!—St. Clair, who even now would lay down his life for her; who even now _sought_ her society, and was never so happy as when basking in her smile! Her heart thrilled, her brain throbbed, and her mind almost maddened as these wild thoughts forced themselves upon her. I say forced themselves, for she repelled them again and again, as fiends that would destroy her quiet, sap her principles, and render her an object of scorn even to herself. But night after night, and her husband was still abroad. At first she saw him depart with pride upon her lip and anguish in her heart. Then sullenness followed, and indifference came after. Then a feeling of pleasure tingled in her breast as the door closed behind him, and a still stronger sensation was experienced as the well known step of St. Clair was heard upon the pavement below her window. But why trace the progress of the weak, the erring human heart? Why linger over the guilt-ward progress of that neglected wife? Why harrow the soul with her struggles between duty on the one hand and infatuation on the other? Why point to her fall, as, step by step, she was hurried to the brink of ruin? Why detail the subtle sophistry of a gifted spirit—one, too, who had persuaded himself that he really loved with a pure and undying flame? Why recount his many appeals to fly to some other land, some distant shore, where the scorn of the heartless world could not point at and exult over another victim? Why picture the secret and agonizing thoughts of the wretched beauty; the sorrow that at moments fastened upon her soul, when some heart-touching expression fell from the lips of her husband, and she was recalled by a look or a phrase to her early dream of home and love and happiness?