For several days she sought an opportunity to speak privately with her father, but his attention was so incessantly occupied by Col. Malcome, that none presented.
When at last she gained his ear, he laughed her suspicions to scorn, and bade her never come to him with such an idle tale again.
The good-natured major was infatuated by, what he termed, the munificent magnanimity of Col. Malcome, and, moreover, had been nurtured in luxurious tastes, and the prospect of reïnstating himself in an elegant home by so easy a process as the marriage of his daughter, was too desirable to be allowed to vanish lightly away.
CHAPTER XLII.
"And they dare blame her! they whose every thought
Look, utterance, act, hath more of evil in 't
Than e'er she dreamed of or could understand,
And she must blush before them, with a heart
Whose lightest throb is worth their all of life!"
In a neat, but scantily furnished apartment of a small, white cottage sat Louise Edson beside the low window which looked forth on a great frowning building with grated bars and ponderous iron doors.