2. CHAPTER II.
At eight o'clock that evening, with a heart
palpitating with the proud news he had brought
for his beloved, Reginald sat in Mr. Smith's
parlor awaiting Lucretia's appearance. The
moment she entered, he sprang to meet her, his
face lighted by the torch of love that was blazing
in his head somewhere and shining through,
and ejaculated, “Mine own!” as he opened his
arms to receive her.
“Sir!” said she, and drew herself up like an
offended queen.
Poor Reginald was stricken dumb with astonishment.
This chilling demeanor, this angry
rebuff, where he had expected the old, tender
welcome, banished the gladness from his heart
as the cheerful brightness is swept from the
landscape when a dark cloud drifts athwart
the face of the sun. He stood bewildered a
moment, with a sense of goneness on him like
one who finds himself suddenly overboard upon
a midnight sea, and beholds the ship pass into
shrouding gloom, while the dreadful conviction
falls upon his soul that he has not been missed.
He tried to speak, but his pallid lips refused
their office. At last he murmured:
“O Lucretia! what have I done; what is the
matter; why this cruel coldness? Don't you
love your Reginald any more?”
Her lips curled in bitter scorn, and she replied,
in mocking tones:
“Don't I love my Reginald any more? No,
I don't love my Reginald any more! Go back
to your pitiful junk-shop and grab your pitiful
yard-stick, and stuff cotton in your ears, so that
you can't hear your country shout to you to
fall in and shoulder arms. Go!” And then,
unheeding the new light that flashed from his
eyes, she fled from the room and slammed the
door behind her.
Only a moment more! Only a single moment
more, he thought, and he could have told
her how he had already answered the summons
and signed his name to the muster-roll, and all
would have been well; his lost bride would
have come back to his arms with words of
praise and thanksgiving upon her lips. He
made a step forward, once, to recall her, but
he remembered that he was no longer an effeminate
drygoods student, and his warrior soul
scorned to sue for quarter. He strode from
the place with martial firmness, and never
looked behind him.
