"After all," she concluded, "married life has exquisite pleasures, as well as terrific possibilities of sorrow. I do not really know whether to advise a young man like you to take a wife or not. Whether you marry or remain single you will be sorry. I think that in either state the pains outweigh the pleasures. It follows that we are not to consider our own happiness, but to do what we think is for the happiness of others. Is not this the true secret of life?" "Is it possible that I have been unjust?" queried Colburne. "Those are not the teachings of a corrupted nature." He did not know and could not have conceived the unnatural conscience, the abnormal ideas of purity and duty, which this woman had created for her own use and comfort, out of elements that are beyond the ken of most New Englanders. He was the child of Puritanism, and she of Balzac's moral philosophy. CHAPTER XXX. COLONEL CARTER COMMITS HIS FIRST UNGENTLEMANLY ACTION. We come now to the times of the famous and unfortunate Red River expedition. During the winter of 1863-4 New Orleans society, civil as well as military, was wild with excitement over the great enterprise which was not only to crush the rebel power in the southwest, but to open to commerce the immense stores of cotton belonging to the princely planters of the Red River bottoms. Cotton was gold, foreign exchange, individual wealth, national solvency. Thousands of men went half mad in their desire for cotton. Cotton was a contagion, an influenza, a delirium. In the height of this excitement a corpulent, baldish, smiling gentleman of fifty was closeted, not for the first time, with the chief quartermaster. His thick feet were planted wide apart, his chubby hands rested on his chubby knees, his broad base completely filled the large office chair in which he sat, his paunchy torso and fat head leaned forward in an attitude of eagerness, and his twinkling grey eyes, encircled by yellowish folds, were fixed earnestly upon the face of Carter. "Colonel, you make a great mistake in letting this chance slip," he said, and then paused to wheeze. The Colonel said nothing, smoked his twenty cent Havana slowly, and gazed thoughtfully at the toes of his twenty dollar boots. With his aristocratic face, his lazy pride of expression, his bran-new citizen's suit, his boots and his Havana, he looked immensely rich and superbly indifferent to all pecuniary chances. "You see, here is a sure thing," continued the oleaginous personage. "Banks' column will be twenty thousand strong. Steele's will be ten thousand. There are thirty thousand, without counting Porter's fleet. The Confederates can't raise twenty thousand to cover the Red River country, if they go to hell. Besides, there is an understanding. Tit for tat, you know. Cotton for cash. You see I am as well posted on the matter as you are, Colonel."