They offered him a chance of pleading his cause, this time, with a happy indirectness of allusion at which not even a young lady's susceptibility could take offence.
"Do you believe in that?" he said, pointing to the illustration.
Regina declined to understand him. "In what?" she asked.
"In love at first sight."
It would be speaking with inexcusable rudeness to say plainly that she told him a lie. Let the milder form of expression be, that she modestly concealed the truth. "I don't know anything about it," she said.
"I do," Amelius remarked smartly.
She persisted in looking at the illustration. Was there an infection of imbecility in that fatal work? She was too simple to understand him, even yet! "You do--what?" she inquired innocently.
"I know what love at first sight is," Amelius burst out.
Regina turned over the leaves of the magazine. "Ah," she said, "you have read the story."
"I haven't read the story," Amelius answered. "I know what I felt myself--on being introduced to a young lady."
She looked up at him with a sly smile. "A young lady in America?" she asked.
"In England, Miss Regina." He tried to take her hand--but she kept it out of his reach. "In London," he went on, drifting back into his customary plainness of speech. "In this very street," he resumed, seizing her hand before she was aware of him. Too much bewildered to know what else to do, Regina took refuge desperately in shaking hands with him. "Goodbye, Mr. Goldenheart," she said--and gave him his dismissal for the second time.
Amelius submitted to his fate; there was something in her eyes which warned him that he had ventured far enough for that day.
"May I call again, soon?" he asked piteously.
"No!" answered a voice at the door which they both recognized--the voice of Mrs. Farnaby.
"Yes!" Regina whispered to him, as her aunt entered the room. Mrs. Farnaby's interference, following on the earlier events of the day, had touched the young lady's usually placable temper in a tender place--and Amelius reaped the benefit of it.
Mrs. Farnaby walked straight up to him, put her hand in his arm, and led him out into the hall.
"I had my suspicions," she said; "and I find they have not misled me. Twice already, I have warned you to let my niece alone. For the third, and last time, I tell you that she is as cold as ice. She will trifle with you as long as it flatters her vanity; and she will throw you over, as she has thrown other men over. Have your fling, you foolish fellow, before you marry anybody. Pay no more visits to this house, unless they are visits to me. I shall expect to hear from you." She paused, and pointed to a statue which was one of the ornaments in the hall. "Look at that bronze woman with the clock in her hand. That's Regina. Be off with you--goodbye!"
Amelius found himself in the street. Regina was looking out at the dining-room window. He kissed his hand to her: she smiled and bowed. "Damn the other men!" Amelius said to himself. "I'll call on her tomorrow."
CHAPTER 4
Returning to his hotel, he found three letters waiting for him on the sitting-room table.
The first letter that he opened was from his landlord, and contained his bill for the past week. As he looked at the sum total, Amelius presented to perfection the aspect of a serious young man. He took pen, ink, and paper, and made some elaborate calculations. Money that he had too generously lent, or too freely given away, appeared in his statement of expenses, as well as money that he had spent on himself. The result may be plainly stated in his own words: "Goodbye to the hotel; I must go into lodgings."
Having arrived at this wise decision, he opened the second letter. It proved to be written by the lawyers who had already communicated with him at Tadmor, on the subject of his inheritance.
"DEAR SIR,
"The enclosed, insufficiently addressed as you will perceive, only reached us this day. We beg to remain, etc."
Amelius opened the letter enclosed, and turned to the signature for information. The name instantly took him back to the Community: the writer was Mellicent.
Her letter began abruptly, in these terms:
"Do you remember what I said to you when we parted at Tadmor? I said, 'Be comforted, Amelius, the end is not yet.' And I said again, 'You will come back to me.'
"I remind you of this, my friend--directing to your lawyers, whose names I remember when their letter to you was publicly read in the Common Room. Once or twice a year I shall continue to remind you of those parting words of mine: there will be a time perhaps when you will thank me for doing so.
"In the mean while, light your pipe with my letters; my letters don't matter. If I can comfort you, and reconcile you to your life--years hence, when you, too, my Amelius, may be one of the Fallen Leaves like me--then I shall not have lived and suffered in vain; my last days on earth will be the happiest days that I have ever seen.
"Be pleased not to answer these lines, or any other written words of mine that may follow, so long as you are prosperous and happy. With that part of your life I have nothing to do. You will find friends wherever you go--among the women especially. Your generous nature shows itself frankly in your face; your manly gentleness and sweetness speak in every tone of your voice; we poor women feel drawn towards you by an attraction which we are not able to resist. Have you fallen in love already with some beautiful English girl? Oh, be careful and prudent! Be sure, before you set your heart on her, that she is worthy of you! So many women are cruel and deceitful. Some of them will make you believe you have won their love, when you have only flattered their vanity; and some are poor weak creatures whose minds are set on their own interests, and who may let bad advisers guide them, when you are not by. For your own sake, take care!
"I am living with my sister, at New York. The days and weeks glide by me quietly; you are in my thoughts and my prayers; I have nothing to complain of; I wait and hope. When the time of my banishment from the Community has expired, I shall go back to Tadmor; and there you will find me, Amelius, the first to welcome you when your spirits are sinking under the burden of life, and your heart turns again to the friends of your early days.
"Goodbye, my dear--goodbye!"
Amelius laid the letter aside, touched and saddened by the artless devotion to him which it expressed. He was conscious also of a feeling of uneasy surprise, when he read the lines which referred to his possible entanglement with some beautiful English girl. Here, with widely different motives, was Mrs. Farnaby's warning repeated, by a stranger writing from another quarter of the globe! It was an odd coincidence, to say the least of it. After thinking for a while, he turned abruptly to the third letter that was waiting for him. He was not at ease; his mind felt the need of relief.
The third letter was from Rufus Dingwell; announcing the close of his tour in Ireland, and his intention of shortly joining Amelius in London.