WEDDING CARDS.

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.

Is there any need to describe it all? Do not all wedding breakfasts look and taste very nearly alike? Do not all our dear "five hundred friends" say the same agreeable things when they congratulate us? Is it not to be supposed that the bridal reception of the charming Miss Clendenon and the elegant Bruce Conway is comme il faut? We are not good at describing such things, dear reader, so we will leave it all to your imagination, which we know will do it ample justice. We want to follow Captain Clendenon and Mrs. Winans as they slowly promenade the back parlor where the wedding gifts are displayed for the pleasure of the wedding guests.

"Now, is not that an exquisite set of bronzes?" she is saying, with her hand lightly touching his arm. "And that silver tea-service from the Bernards—is it not superb? That statuette I have never seen equaled. Ah, see! there is the gift of Major Fontenay, that ice-cream set in silver, lined with gold. That is generous in him—is it not, poor fellow?"

"To my mind, that exquisitely bound Bible is the prettiest thing in the collection," he returns.

"It is beautiful. That is from her Sunday-school children. This ruby necklace, set in gold and pearls, is from Mrs. Conway——"

"And this?" he touches a sandal-wood jewel casket, satin-lined, and holding a pair of slender dead-gold bracelets with monograms exquisitely wrought in diamonds—"this is——"

"My gift to Lulu."

"Oh! they are beautiful, as are all the things. But, do you know, Mrs. Winans, that I am so old-fashioned in my ideas that I do not approve of the habit of making wedding presents—no, I do not mean where friendship or love prompts the gift—but the indiscriminate practice, you understand!"

"You are right; but in the case of your sister, Captain Clendenon, I think that the most of her very pretty collection of wedding gifts are the spontaneous expressions of genuine affection and respect. Lulu is very much beloved among her circle of friends."

"You, at least," he says, reflectively, "will miss her greatly. You have so long honored her by your preference for her society and companionship. How will you fill up the long months of her absence?"

She sighs softly.

"She has left me a precious charge—all her poor to look after, her heathen fund, her sewing society—much that has been her sole charge heretofore, and which I fear may be but imperfectly fulfilled by me. Still I will do my best."

"You always do your best, I think, in all that you undertake," says this loyal heart.

"Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, I think," she answers, with a faint flush evoked by his quiet meed of praise.

Then people begin to flock in to look at the wedding gifts and at Grace Winans, who is the loveliest thing of all. She has on a wedding garment in the shape of pale violet silk, with overdress of cool muslin, trimmed with Valenciennes, white kid gloves and turquois ornaments set in pearls. The wedding guests wore their bonnets, and she had a flimsy affair of white lace studded with pansies on the top of her graceful head. Her dress was somewhat after the style of fashionable half-mourning. She had selected it purposely because not knowing if she were wife or widow a more showy attire was repugnant to her feelings.

"This," she said, touching a costly little prayer-book with golden cross, monogram, and clasps. "This, I fancy, is from you."

"You are right," he answered. "This set of the poets so handsomely bound is from mother. But are you not weary of looking at all these things? Shall we not go and find Lulu?"

"By the way," she says, idly, as they slowly pass through the politely staring throng, exchanging frequent nods and smiles with acquaintances, and occasional compliments with more intimate friends, "there is a report—have you heard it?—from Memphis, Tennessee—of the yellow fever."

"Yes," he answers, slowly. "I have heard the faintest rumor of it," looking down with a cloud in his clear eyes at the fair inscrutable face. "Are you worried about it? I remember to have heard you say your nearest relatives were there."

"Only distant relatives," she answers, composedly. "I am no more worried about them than about the other inhabitants of that city. My relatives had little sympathy for me in the days of my bereavement and destitution, and though one may overlook and forgive such things one does not easily forget."

He was looking at her all the time she was speaking, though her eyes had not lifted to his. On the sweet, outwardly serene face he saw the impress of a growing purpose. What it was he dared not whisper to his own heart.

The cloud only leaves his brow when they reach his radiant sister. She stands beneath a bridal arch of fragrant white blossoms, roses, and lilies, and orange blossoms dropping their pendant leaves down over her head as she receives the congratulations and adieus of her friends before she goes to change her bridal robe for the traveling-dress in which she is to start for the other shores of the Atlantic. Conway is beside her, nonchalant, smiling, handsome, very well satisfied with himself and the world. As his glance falls on the fair, pensive face of the Senator's deserted wife, the smile forsakes his lip, one sigh is given to the memory of "what might have been," and turning again to his young bride, the past is put away from him forever, and he is content.

And presently the new-made Mrs. Conway flits up stairs with Gracie, to array herself in the sober gray traveling-silk.

Grace parts the misty folds of the bridal vail and kisses the pearl-fair forehead.

"Oh, darling!" she whispers, "may God be very good to you—may he bless you in your union with the man of your choice."

Lulu's tears, always lying near the surface, begin to flow.

"Oh, Gracie," she says, suddenly, "if all should not be as we fear—if I should chance to see your husband on the shores of Europe, may I tell him—remember he has suffered so much—may I tell him that you take back the words you said in the first agony of your baby's loss?"

"What was it I said?" asked Gracie, with soft surprise.

"Do you not remember the night you were taken ill, when you were half delirious, and he came to see you——"

"Did he come to see me?" interrupts Grace.

"Certainly—don't you remember? You were half delirious, and you fancied your husband had hidden away the child to worry you, and you said——"

"I said—oh, what did I say, Lulu?" breathed the listener, impatiently.

Lulu stopped short, looking, in surprise, at the other.

"Gracie, is it possible that you were entirely delirious, and that you recollect nothing of your husband's visit and your refusal to see him?"

"This is the first I ever knew of it," said Grace, sadly; "but go on, Lulu, and tell me, please, what I did say."

"You refused to see him, though entreated to do so by Mrs. Conway; you said you would never see him—never, never—unless he came with the missing child in his arms."

"Did I say all that, Lulu?" asked Grace, in repentant surprise.

"All that, and more. You said that if he attempted to enter your room you would spring from the window—and he was in the parlor; he heard every word from your own lips."

"Oh, Lulu, I must have been delirious; I remember nothing of all that, and it has, perhaps, kept him from me all the time," came in a moan from the unhappy young creature, as she leaned against the toilet-table, with one hand clasping her heart.

Lulu caught up a bottle of eau-de-cologne and showered the fine, fragrant spray over the white face, just as Mrs. Clendenon hurried in.

"My darling, do you know you should have been down stairs before this time—hurry, do."

And too much absorbed in her own grief to observe the ill-concealed agitation of Mrs. Winans, or attributing it to her sorrow at losing Lulu, the mother assisted the young bride to change her white silk for her traveling one.

Then for one moment Lulu flung herself in passionate tears on her friend's breast, with a hundred incoherent injunctions and promises, from which she was disturbed by the entrance of Mrs. Conway, radiantly announcing that the carriage waited and they had no time to spare. And Lulu, lingering only for a blessing from her mother's lips, a prayerful "God bless you" from her brother's, went forth with hope on her path, love in her heart, and the sunshine on her head, to the new life she had chosen.

When the last guest had departed, the "banquet fled, the garland dead," Mrs. Winans removed her bonnet, and spent the remainder of the day in diverting the sad mother whose heart was aching at the loss of her youngest darling.

"It seems as if all the sunshine had gone out of the house with her," Willard said, sadly, to Grace, as they stood looking together at the deserted bridal arch that seemed drooping and fading, as if in grief for the absent head over which it had lately blossomed. "I fancied we should keep our baby with us always in the dear home nest; but she is gone, so soon—a wife before I had realized she had passed the boundaries of childhood."

"The months of absence will pass away very quickly," she said, gently, trying to comfort him as best she could, "and you will have her back with you."

"I don't know," he said, with a half-sob in his manly voice, lifting a long, trailing spray of white blossoms that an hour before he had seen resting against the dear brown head of his sister, touching it tenderly to his lips—"I don't know, Mrs. Winans. I don't believe in presentiments—I am not at all superstitious—but to-day, when I kissed my sister's lips in farewell, a chill crept through my frame, a voice, that seemed as clear and distinct as any human voice, seemed to whisper in my ear, 'Never again on this side of eternity!' What did it mean?"

Ah! Willard Clendenon—that the fleshly vail that separates your pure spirit from the angels is so clear that a gleam of your near immortality glimmered through!