CHAPTER XL.

"IT IS LIKE SUICIDE!"

"Round the post-office window are pressing A motley and turbulent throng. All eagerly bent on possessing The letter they've looked for so long. To some come dark tidings of sorrow, To others come tidings of bliss; Uncertain is every to-morrow, And the world like the post-office is."

FRANCIS S. SMITH.

All unconscious of the fact that she had been so near to the lover for whom she mourned, Geraldine returned home with her mother, and even as they went up the steps the postman followed on his afternoon round and placed two letters in her hand.

She glanced at them, and a cry of joy broke from her lips as she saw that one bore the New York postmark and was in Cissy's familiar hand.

The other one was postmarked Chicago, and was addressed to the governess, Miss Erroll.

And if Geraldine could have guessed how fatally that letter concerned herself, she would have been justified in tearing it to fragments and scattering it in wrath to the four winds of heaven.

If some saving hypnotic power had but impelled her to this course, what suffering she would have been spared. But in her joy over Cissy's letter, she scarcely gave a thought to Miss Erroll.

Going up stairs to her own apartments, she passed the school-room and tapped lightly on the door.

"A letter for you," she said, courteously, to the governess, not noticing how the woman's hand trembled, when she took it.

But the face of Miss Erroll grew ashy pale when, alone with her pupils, she opened and read her letter from Clifford Standish.

"To think that she should have this letter in her hands; that she should have brought it to me, it is a mockery of fate! It is like--suicide!" she muttered, through her writhing lips, and a bitter sigh heaved her breast.

Geraldine hurried to her own rooms and read Cissy's letter before she removed her wraps, so eager was her fond heart for news from New York.

"She will be here to-morrow, to-morrow, the dear girl!" she cried, joyfully, kissing the letter in the exuberance of her gladness.

But the letter contained other news that was very puzzling.

"Harry followed me to Chicago on the next train, the darling boy! But how strange that he has never come to me! Does he know where I am? Is he in the same city with me?" were questions that repeated themselves over and over in her bewildered brain.

She could understand now why he had never answered her letter. Of course, he had never received it, since he was on her trail following her abductor and his victim in their flight from New York.

"But why, oh, why does he not come to me? Is it possible he cannot find me, my dear, dear, love? Ah, I have it now! He is following Clifford Standish up, and of course he can find no trace of me," she decided, and immediately resolved to insert personals in the prominent newspapers of the next day in the hope of reaching him.

When she had exchanged her carriage dress for a lovely house robe, fluttering with lace and ribbons, she sought her mother, with Cissy's letter.

Mrs. Fitzgerald rejoiced with her daughter over the coming of her friend, but she said not a word about Harry Hawthorne.

She was secretly annoyed at learning that he had followed Geraldine to Chicago. She thought, in dismay:

"He may be turning up here at any moment, claiming my daughter, and she is so headstrong, she will never consent to give him up. What shall I do?"

But her woman's wit could suggest no answer to the question.

She was honorable and high-minded, and shrank from using harsh or underhand means to break off Geraldine's engagement.

Geraldine saw the lack of sympathy in her mother's mobile face, and thought, sadly:

"She is still unrelenting. I shall have no sympathy in my sorrow until Cissy comes. Then I can whisper all my grief to her faithful heart."

And she longed all the more anxiously for to-morrow's sun that would shine on the coming of her beloved friend.

And, to lighten her suspense, she spent some time superintending the arrangement of the beautiful room next to her own that was being prepared for Miss Carroll's occupancy. Some of her own favorite books were carried in--Cissy was inordinately fond of reading--flowers were lavished here and there. When it was all ready, the pretty room in pink and silver was dainty enough for a princess.

"Cissy will enjoy it so much. She likes pretty things. And I shall buy her some dainty gowns, and--lots of things! She shall see how I love her!" the girl whispered to herself, with tears of joy in her beautiful brown eyes.

Then she went to her desk and wrote out and sent the personals she had thought of to the newspapers for to-morrow.

"Mamma would not approve, I know, but perhaps she will never find out what I have done. But, at any risk, I would have done it. I cannot give up my own true love! I believe God made us for each other," she thought, tenderly.

She spent a restless night, thinking of Cissy's coming to-morrow, and wondering where her lover was to-night in this great Western city, little dreaming that he was speeding from it in the deepening night.