Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl; or, Wedded to Her Choice

"Only five minutes till next act—only five minutes."

She broke away from him, panting, breathlessly:

"I cannot answer you now."

She fled to her dressing-room, glad to escape his importunities, yet feeling as if she did not do him justice by her lack of love.

"He is so patient, so tender, and so eager to spare me pain, that I ought to love him more than I do," she told herself.

Respect and esteem she could give him, for she believed that he was good and noble, so well had he acted the traitor's part; but love—oh, we cannot give love at will!

"Life's perfect June, Love's red, red rose,
Have burned and bloomed for me.
Though still youth's summer sunlight glows;
Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find
I have no heart for thee."

She stole to the wings one moment, to gaze by stealth at the theatre party, and by the merest accident Harry Hawthorne was leaning over the bride's chair, talking to her of some trifle, but the sight made Geraldine draw back all white and quivering, with a cruel pang at her heart.

"I hate him!" she moaned, to herself, in a passion of jealous despair.

But when she came upon the stage she did not look again at the box, or she would have seen that Harry Hawthorne sat apart from Daisy, by the side of Cissy. She acted her part well, for in it there was much of the tragic pain that suited well with her desperate mood.

At the close of the second act, Standish renewed his pleadings for a marriage that night, and in her bitter mood, Geraldine, like many others who exchange one pain for another in mad impatience, ceased to struggle against his importunities and yielded a passive consent to his ardent prayer.

CHAPTER XVII.

AT THE END OF THE PLAY

"A love like ours was a challenge to fate;
She rang down the curtain and shifted the scene;
Yet sometimes now, when the day grows late,
I can hear you calling for Little Queen.
For a happy home and a busy life
Can never wholly crowd out our past;
In the twilight pauses that come from strife
You will think of me while life shall last."

Yes, she had promised to marry Clifford Standish as soon as the last act of the play was over. The act would leave the heroine, Laurel, presumably "happy ever after" but must plunge poor Geraldine into deeper despair.

For though she admired Clifford Standish greatly, was proud of his love, and grateful for his kindness, she did not feel as if she could ever love him as she had loved another. Her poor heart seemed dead and cold in its numb misery of slighted love, and the thought of marriage was repugnant to every instinct of her nature.

But she owed Clifford Standish such a debt of gratitude that there seemed no way of paying it save by yielding to his importunate entreaties for an immediate marriage.

But how she shrank from the moment that would seal her fate, although she had failed in courage to defend herself from it.

It was a bitter pride that was pushing her into this unloving marriage.

She would let Harry Hawthorne, who had flirted with her so cruelly, see that she did not care for him at all; that she could marry a man who was his superior in position, in riches, and in everything that made up true and noble manhood.

Geraldine despised a male flirt. Whenever one of the creatures tried to catch her eyes in public, she always set him down beneath contempt, and one withering glance from her flashing eyes would make him shrink into himself, ashamed for once before the scornful eyes of a true woman.

And the thought that Harry Hawthorne was one of those contemptible wretches was inexpressibly bitter.

She had shed many secret tears over the dread that he had read in her frank brown eyes the tenderness he had awakened in her heart.

She thought when she was married to the actor, and Hawthorne heard of it, he would think she had only been flirting with him at Newburgh, and that she had been engaged to Standish all the while. In this fancy there was a kind of balm for her aching heart.

She could hardly keep the tears back from her eyes as she thought it over and over, wondering if, after all, Harry Hawthorne had not cared for her a wee bit, but had been bound to Daisy Odell beforehand.

She wondered if she should ever meet him again, after she was married, and if it would give him pain to know if she belonged to another man.

To save her life, Geraldine could not help half-believing in the ardent love that had looked at her out of those dark-blue eyes, and if she would but have looked up at the box where he sat, she would have seen that love shining on her still—a love as strong as death, although it was so hopeless.

But Geraldine did not look that way, tutored to proud indifference by the cunning arts of Standish. She seemed cold as ice, but her heart was burning with restless longings for her lost love-dream.

"Perhaps he may repent and love me some day when it is too late—too late!" she sighed, bitterly, thinking of the sweet

SONG OF MARGARET.

"Ay, I saw her; we have met;
Married eyes, how sweet they be!
Are you happier, Margaret,
Than you might have been with me?
Silence! make no more ado!
Did she think I should forget?
Matters nothing, though I knew,
Margaret, Margaret!

"Once those eyes, full sweet, full shy,
Told a certain thing to mine;
What they told me I put by,
Oh, so careless of the sign.
Such an easy thing to take,
And I did not want it then;
Fool! I wish my heart would break;
Scorn is hard on hearts of men!

"Scorn of self is bitter work;
Each of us has felt it now;
Bluest skies she counted mirk,
Self-betrayed of eyes and brow.
As for me, I went my way.
And a better man drew nigh,
Fain to earn, with long essay,
What the winner's hand threw by.

"Matters not in deserts old