HEARTS OF GOLD

13. WEDDING BELLS

142 WEDDING BELLS. Chapter XIII. August and September have been numbered with the past since last we saw Regenia Underwood and Mrs. Levitt sitting on the steps of their home at the “Elms,” dreaming over the gilded romance and stern realities of bygone days. The leaves which at that season clothed the oaks and elms in nature’s royal green, had grown sere and yellow and left their former associates in winter’s rough undress. The crisp wind and biting frost of October had stripped bush and tree of their drooping foliage. The sweltering sun of sultry dog days, followed by the masterful touch of Autumn’s artistic brush, had tinted all nature with cardinal and gold, and yet the hasty promises sown during Conclave week, had not ripened into garnered realities. Not a word had penetrated the seclusion of the “Elms” from the undoubted Knight and gallant, Lotus Stone. If he had written, Regenia had not received the missive. It was not likely, Regenia said to herself, day after day, that a letter directed to the “Elms” could have been miscarried. To this innocent girl, firmly believing the sunshine promises of those she met, the silence of Mr. Stone presented a dilemma too complicated for her solution. Mr. Stone had obtained her permission to further pursue the agreeable acquaintance formed between them by a friendly correspondence. Regenia believed he meant what he said, but despite her faith, the long expected letter did not come. It did not occur to Regenia that his letter might have been intercepted. The postman could have informed her differently. He could have told her of a polite friend who on several occasions kindly relieved him of the mail intended for the “Elms,” and if she had received no letters, Dr. Leighton might account for their disappearance. 143 hearts of gold In truth, Lotus Stone had written more than once since he left Mt. Clare. His first duty after his return to Washington was to write to the woman to whose unknown keeping he had consigned his heart. He waited more than a month, but received no answer. He resigned his position in the departmental service and decided to finish the last year of his medical course in one of the great schools of New York. Before leaving Washington, however, he addressed a second letter to Regenia, but that receiving the same fate as the first, he left for his new field of study a sadder but wiser man. For some reason he did not attempt through the medium of Clement St. John to solve the problem of Regenia’s silence. Concealing his disappointment beneath the mantle of his pride, he entered upon the pursual of his course a more determined if a less happy man. He tried to shut Regenia out of his thoughts and efface the image of the sweet girl from his memory, but the effort was in vain. He wasted the nights that should have been given to rest and recuperation for the work before him in idly indulging his fancy in the most ridiculous conjectures. He would sometimes imagine himself dead, and from a martyr’s heaven watching Regenia as she stood above his cold corpse weeping herself away in the remembrance of her disregard for his devotion. Again he would congratulate himself that he had succeeded in forgetting her; this stage of the case, however, would rarely last longer than a day. Whenever books and lectures left his mind to its own resources, Regenia Underwood, try as he might to banish her, occupied it to the exclusion of every other thought. He had arrived at that stage of self-deception, or he at least flattered himself that he had, when he believed women as inconstant as the wind. “What more is she to me than any other butterfly of a day’s devotion?” he asked himself frequently, and as often answered, “Nothing;” but the response belied the facts. Did he grow thin and petulant worrying over the other butterflies that time and again had flitted into his horizon? In one resolution, however, he was persistent: he would never write again until she answered the letters already sent, nor would he ever manifest his disappointment to Clement . In this determination, however, he was not alone, Regenia had also resolved never to indicate her chagrin to Lucile. If this love-sick swain and innocent lass, hardening their hearts against each other, could have peeped into the secret drawer in a certain...