departed friend. He was very sorry that business would compel him to
leave town for some little time--

Laura had the spirit to interrupt him saying, "It matters little, sir.
There are no further Wall Street operations to be carried on here.
Invest your time and friendship where it will pay."

Mr. Goulden, who plumed himself that he would slip out of this bad
matrimonial speculation with such polished skill that he would leave
only flattering regret and sighs behind, under the biting satire of
Laura's words suddenly saw what a contemptible creature is the man
whom selfish policy, rather than honor and principle, governs. He had
brains enough to comprehend himself and lose his self-respect then and
there, as he went away tingling with shame from the girl whom he had
wronged, but who had detected his sordid meanness. Sigh after him! She
would ever despise him, and that hurt Mr. Goulden's vanity severely.
He had come very near loving Laura Allen, about as near perhaps as he
ever would come to loving any one, and it had cost him a little more
to give her up than to choose between a good and a bad venture on the
Street. With compressed lips he had said to himself--"No gushing
sentiment. In carrying out your purpose to be rich you must marry
wealth." Therefore he had gone to make what he meant to be his final
call, feeling quite heroic in his steadfastness--his loyalty to
purpose, that is, himself. But as he recalled during his homeward walk
her glad welcome, her wistful, pleading looks, and then, as she
realized the truth, her pain, her contempt, and her meaning words of
scorn, his miserable egotism was swept aside, and for the first time
the selfish man saw the question from her standpoint, and as we have
said he was not so shallow but that he saw and loathed himself. He
lost his self-respect as he never had done before, and therefore to a