TEDDY'S LOVE LETTERS.

"I wonder what has detained Jack Wren? He promised to be here this evening at five o'clock sharp. Here it is six," Teddy Darrell said, impatiently, as he looked at his watch, then lingered dreamily a moment over the fair face of Kathleen smiling up at him from within the golden lid.

"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.

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!"

He sorted out her letters, and placed them with her picture in a secret drawer, for he had a lingering fondness for his old sweetheart, pretty Gussie, the famous novelist.

"I will just keep these," he said. "I don't believe Kathleen would care, for she reads and loves Gussie's novels. And if anything should happen that I do not marry Kathleen—and it was strange the way she acted about Chainey—I should like to know I have these still."

He gathered all his mementoes and, with a genuine sigh, flung them upon the glowing blaze.

"It is but just to Kathleen," he said, trying to stifle his regret.

Teddy had a warm heart, and it was no disloyalty to Kathleen that made him sigh so sadly. He would not have exchanged her for any other girl he had ever loved; but somehow the thought of Gussie haunted him. She had been his first love, and it was a lover's quarrel that had driven them asunder. That was several years ago, and now she was married and a shining literary light: but it was quite certain that if ever Kathleen had a rival in Teddy's thoughts, it would be this one lost love.

A loud rap at the door startled him. It was Jack Wren, who entered in haste with an excited face.

"I had quite given you up, Mr. Wren," said Teddy, startled out of his tender recollections.

"Darrell, come with me. We have no time to lose. I have made a startling discovery. I have a cab waiting below, and you must come with me to the rescue of one you love, for she is at this moment in peril of her life! I have been on Ivan Belmont's track ever since I saw you, and he and Fedora, who escaped from the prison when the cyclone shattered it, are together now at Cooper's saw-mill, in Wild Cat Glen, plotting a terrible crime!" breathlessly answered Jack Wren.