She and Ada had come upstairs early, leaving Mrs. Hamilton chatting with her brother in the cozy library.
“Come in, and let us look at the wedding gifts together,” Eva said, drawing Ada into her own rooms. She could not bear to be left alone to the companionship of her own thoughts. They kept wandering back to the interrupted bridal of over two years ago.
A fortune in wedding gifts was arranged on tables in her boudoir. They looked them over, admiring, while Ada said:
“How fortunate you are, my dear little girl!”
“Fortunate!” echoed Eva, but there was a world of tragic meaning in her tone.
She took up a white satin case and opened it. The electric light flashed on a heart pendant, set with rubies, that glowed weirdly like blood.
“I cannot keep from looking at this over and over,” she said. “It fascinates me. It seems symbolical. A bleeding heart! Why did Doctor Ludington send it to me?”
“To remind you, perhaps,” Ada answered gently.
“It was cruel—as if I ever could forget!” and her bosom shook with a long sigh as she put it from her hands again. She continued wildly:
“Oh, Ada, do you keep thinking of that other night as I do? Is it Reggie who will really be my bridegroom and not Rupert? Somehow I cannot realize it, now that it comes so terribly near. My brain is all in a whirl, my thoughts are confused; I am not happy and expectant, as on that other bridal eve. My heart feels heavy as lead in my breast! Do you—do you think anything can happen to prevent it this time?”