TEDDY'S LOVE LETTERS.
"Closely shut within my chamber,
Where the fire is burning bright,
All these letters, long since written,
I must read and burn to-night."
"I wonder what has detained Jack Wren? He promised to be here this
evening at five o'clock sharp. Here it is six," Teddy Darrell said,
impatiently, as he looked at his watch, then lingered dreamily a moment
over the fair face of Kathleen smiling up at him from within the golden
lid.
"Sweet darling! in a few more days she will be mine," he murmured, and
forgot Jack Wren in sweet anticipations of his wedding-day now near at
hand.
Teddy was waiting in his rooms for the detective; and now, to beguile
the time, he took some letters from his inside pocket and began to run
over their perfumed contents, smiling softly now and then to himself.
Then he got up, walked about the room, shook himself together and
sighed, then laughed.
"Poor little dears! it's hard to give you up, after all."
The "little dears" probably referred to Teddy's old sweethearts,
whose names were "legion"--such a string of them there was: Hatties,
Helens, Lauras, Gussies, Saras, Emmies, Roses, Fredas, Annies, Nellies,
Katies, Lenas, Noras, Mauds, Nannies, and so on through a list of the
belles and beauties of several seasons, whose letters and photographs
were treasured in Teddy's desk, soon to be ruefully sacrificed to the
fire-fiend; for "Benedict, the married man," must not carry any of
these sentimental mementoes of the past into his new life.
"Here a dainty school-girl's letter
Still retains its faint perfume,
But the little hand that wrote it
Molders in a foreign tomb.
Close beside it lies another
In an awkward, girlish hand,
Desperately sentimental--
Ah! I now can understand
Just how silly two such lovers
As we were then must have been--
She about a year my junior,
I a youngster just nineteen!"
Teddy unlocked a drawer of his desk and brought out a miscellaneous
pile of letters, photographs, faded flowers, and locks of hair of every
shade known to woman's head. I am ashamed to record it of Kathleen's
prospective bridegroom that he cast glances of unfeigned regret
at these treasures as he prepared to devote them to the flames--a
sacrifice on the altar of his love for Kathleen.
How he lingered over those pretty photographs!--over Rose, the
beautiful actress, in the dress she had worn as Iza in "The Clemenceau
Case."
"Ah, Rose was a model girl!" he laughed, as he laid it down and turned
to stately Laura in the two-thousand-dollar gown, the very envy of all
her feminine friends when she wore it to Madame Frivolity's ball. Next
to it was Gussie, with her sweet and serious face, the dark curls lying
softly against her temples, the dimpled white shoulders peeping above
the little sleeves of that simple white lace dress in which Teddy had
liked her best. He gazed long and earnestly at the girlish face, and a
memory came to him of that moonlight evening in the vine-covered arbor
when Gussie's arms had clung about his neck, drawing his dark, handsome
face down close to hers while the blue-gray eyes gazed tenderly into
his dark ones as she whispered, in answer to his question, "My dear old
Dark Eyes, I love _you_!"
"Upon my soul, I believe that flirtation hit me hard! She was the
sweetest of them all, and I was almost sorry I let her marry Bob. Ah,
well, Gussie, dear, I too shall be married soon, and these bitter-sweet
memories of ours must be tossed into the rag-bag of the past!"
He sorted out _her_ letters, and placed them with her picture in a
secret drawer, for he had a lingering fondness for his old sweetheart,
pretty Gussie, the famous novelist.
"I will just keep these," he said. "I don't believe Kathleen would
care, for she reads and loves Gussie's novels. And if anything should
happen that I do not marry Kathleen--and it was strange the way she
acted about Chainey--I should like to know I have these still."
He gathered all his mementoes and, with a genuine sigh, flung them upon
the glowing blaze.
"It is but just to Kathleen," he said, trying to stifle his regret.
"Back the mists of years are rolling
As these relics of the past,
With a wondrous fascination,
Have their spells around me cast.
Crowds of tender recollections
Fill my eyes with unshed tears;
Dimmer grows the glowing future--
Dimmer till it disappears."
Teddy had a warm heart, and it was no disloyalty to Kathleen that made
him sigh so sadly. He would not have exchanged her for any other girl
he had ever loved; but somehow the thought of Gussie haunted him. She
had been his first love, and it was a lover's quarrel that had driven
them asunder. That was several years ago, and now she was married and a
shining literary light: but it was quite certain that if ever Kathleen
had a rival in Teddy's thoughts, it would be this one lost love.
A loud rap at the door startled him. It was Jack Wren, who entered in
haste with an excited face.
"I had quite given you up, Mr. Wren," said Teddy, startled out of his
tender recollections.
"Darrell, come with me. We have no time to lose. I have made a
startling discovery. I have a cab waiting below, and you must come with
me to the rescue of one you love, for she is at this moment in peril of
her life! I have been on Ivan Belmont's track ever since I saw you, and
he and Fedora, who escaped from the prison when the cyclone shattered
it, are together now at Cooper's saw-mill, in Wild Cat Glen, plotting a
terrible crime!" breathlessly answered Jack Wren.