Fair Lulu found so little time amid the preparations that went so swiftly forward for her marriage that she was very glad to avail herself of Grace's offered assistance in looking after her poor people, her missionary box, &c., and so the lonely and depressed young creature found something to occupy her time as well as to fill up her thoughts. She was of great assistance, too, to Lulu in the selection and purchase of the bridal trousseau in which she took a pleasant feminine interest.
Lulu, who deferred always to her friend's exquisite taste, would suffer nothing to be purchased until first pronounced comme il faut by Mrs. Winans; and Bruce Conway, who had returned in the midst of the season from Washington, and haunted Lulu's steps with lover-like devotion, declared that his most dangerous rival in Lulu's heart was Mrs. Winans.
The old yearning passion he had felt for Grace had passed into a dream of the past; something he never liked to recall, because there was something of pain about it still like the soreness of an old wound—"what deep wound ever healed without a scar?" But they were very good friends now—not cordial—they would never be that, but still very pleasant and genial to each other.
Mrs. Conway, who was very well pleased to see Bruce about to marry, wished it to be so, Lulu wished it to be so; and these two who had been so much to each other, and who were so little now, tried, and succeeded in overcoming a certain embarrassment they felt, and for Lulu's sake, and not to shadow her happiness, endured each other's presence.
"Mrs. Winans," he had said one day, when some odd chance had left them alone together in Lulu's parlor, "it is an unpleasant thing to speak of. Yet I have always wanted to tell you how, from the very depths of my soul, I am sorry that any folly of mine has brought upon you so much unmerited suffering. Can you ever forgive me?"
She glanced up at him from the small bit of embroidery that occupied her glancing white fingers, her eyes a thought bluer for the moment with the stirring of the still waters that flowed through the dim fields of memory and the pure young spirit came up a moment to look at him through those serene orbs.
"Can I, yes," she answered, gravely. "When I pray, nightly, that Our Father will forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me, my heart is free from ill-feeling toward any one. How else could I expect to be forgiven?"
And Lulu's entrance, with a song on her happy lips, had put an end to the conversation that was never again revived between them.
And days, and weeks, and months went by and brought June. In that month the wedding was to be, and Lulu and her mother, beginning to realize the parting that loomed up so close before them, began to make April weather in the home that had been all sunshine.
But "time does not stop for tears." The fateful day came when Lulu, in her white silk dress, and floating vail and orange blossoms, stood before the altar and took on her sweet lips the vow to be faithful until death do us part, and, as in a dream, she was whirled back to her home to the wedding reception and breakfast, after which she was to depart on that European tour.