"This," she said, touching a costly little prayer-book with golden cross, monogram, and clasps. "This, I fancy, is from you."
"You are right," he answered. "This set of the poets so handsomely bound is from mother. But are you not weary of looking at all these things? Shall we not go and find Lulu?"
"By the way," she says, idly, as they slowly pass through the politely staring throng, exchanging frequent nods and smiles with acquaintances, and occasional compliments with more intimate friends, "there is a report--have you heard it?--from Memphis, Tennessee--of the _yellow fever_."
"Yes," he answers, slowly. "I have heard the faintest rumor of it," looking down with a cloud in his clear eyes at the fair inscrutable face. "Are you worried about it? I remember to have heard you say your nearest relatives were there."
"Only distant relatives," she answers, composedly. "I am no more worried about them than about the other inhabitants of that city. My relatives had little sympathy for me in the days of my bereavement and destitution, and though one may overlook and forgive such things one does not easily forget."
He was looking at her all the time she was speaking, though her eyes had not lifted to his. On the sweet, outwardly serene face he saw the impress of a growing purpose. What it was he dared not whisper to his own heart.
The cloud only leaves his brow when they reach his radiant sister. She stands beneath a bridal arch of fragrant white blossoms, roses, and lilies, and orange blossoms dropping their pendant leaves down over her head as she receives the congratulations and adieus of her friends before she goes to change her bridal robe for the traveling-dress in which she is to start for the other shores of the Atlantic. Conway is beside her, nonchalant, smiling, handsome, very well satisfied with himself and the world. As his glance falls on the fair, pensive face of the Senator's deserted wife, the smile forsakes his lip, one sigh is given to the memory of "what might have been," and turning again to his young bride, the past is put away from him forever, and he is content.
And presently the new-made Mrs. Conway flits up stairs with Gracie, to array herself in the sober gray traveling-silk.