“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.”
“I think I must be a very old friend, then, by your conduct towards me. By the same rule I should judge that Col. Selby must be very new.”
Laura looked up quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to such impertinence, but she only said, “Well, what of Col. Selby, sauce-box?”
“Nothing, probably, you’ll care for. Your being with him so much is the town talk, that’s all?”
“What do people say?” asked Laura calmly.
“Oh, they say a good many things. You are offended, though, to have me speak of it?”
“Not in the least. You are my true friend. I feel that I can trust you. You wouldn’t deceive me, Harry?” throwing into her eyes a look of trust and tenderness that melted away all his petulance and distrust. “What do they say?”
“Some say that you’ve lost your head about him; others that you don’t care any more for him than you do for a dozen others, but that he is completely fascinated with you and about to desert his wife; and others say it is nonsense to suppose you would entangle yourself with a married man, and that your intimacy only arises from the matter of the cotton, claims, for which he wants your influence with Dilworthy. But you know everybody is talked about more or less in Washington. I shouldn’t care; but I wish you wouldn’t have so much to do with Selby, Laura,” continued Harry, fancying that he was now upon such terms that his, advice, would be heeded.
“And you believed these slanders?”