He plucked the sweetest bud that grew there, and having enjoyed its odor, trampled it in the mire beneath his feet.

George Selby, the deceased, a handsome, accomplished Confederate Colonel, was this human fiend.

He deceived her with a mock marriage; after some months he brutally, abandoned her, and spurned her as if she were a contemptible thing; all the time he had a wife in New Orleans.
Laura was crushed.

For weeks, as I shall show you by the testimony of her adopted mother and brother, she hovered over death in delirium.
Gentlemen, did she ever emerge from this delirium?
I shall show you that when she recovered her health, her mind was changed, she was not what she had been.

You can judge yourselves whether the tottering reason ever recovered its throne.
"Years pass.