A Little Queen of Hearts by Ruth Ogden — Read

It was a close foggy morning in London, and Mr. Everett Belden, having breakfasted a whole hour earlier than usual, stood gazing out upon the street from one of the windows of the Reform Club. It is two months now since we let him go his lonely way from the steamer; and this may surprise you, for what with the doings up at Windsor and the complications in the cottage at Nuneham, you may not have kept any track of the time. None the less is it true that in all this while we have not given so much as a thought to Mr. Belden or to aught that concerns him; and for all I know it is just as well. The little "buttons" who keeps guard during the day at the door of the Reform Club and the smartly liveried Irishman who takes his place at night would both tell you that Mr. Belden has come in and out all the while with great regularity, having his saddle horse brought around at precisely the same hour every clear morning, and going out for a walk at precisely the same hour every afternoon. There is no evidence that in all these weeks he has been of the least real use to anybody, or that, notwithstanding his recent encounter with a little girl who had set him thinking rather seriously for a time, he had in any way altered or modified his selfish way of living.

They are creatures of habit these self-centred old bachelors, and it takes a great deal to start them out along any new line of action, and doubly so when, like Mr. Belden, they do not know what it is to feel buoyantly well and strong. And so to all outward appearances there was no change whatever in this particular old bachelor, and the little sermon Marie-Celeste had unconsciously preached on the steamer and the reading of the "Story of a Short Life" had only given him a glimpse of what a noble thing life might be, without awakening any real determination to make his own life noble. But outward appearances, as often happens, are not by any means the infallible things the world would have us believe, and deep down in Mr. Belden's heart had dropped a little seed of unrest that made itself felt that sultry August morning; not but that his heart was all unrest for that matter, for there is no restlessness in the world like the restlessness of doing nothing; but this little seed was of a new and different character, and with such power of growth in it that, tiny though it was, it finally compelled Mr. Belden to take it into account.