"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!"