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

She reeled blindly forward and fell like a log at the dastard's feet.

This was what Jem Rhodes had hoped and expected.

With a laugh of demoniac satisfaction he lifted Geraldine in his arms, and bore her to a second-class coach, having bought tickets for this with a distinct purpose.

To his joy he found that he and Geraldine would be the only passengers on this coach.

"The foul fiend helps me! I'll have a fair field for my love-making," he thought, exultantly, as the train steamed out from the station.

Presently Geraldine, whom he had lain back on her seat, stirred and opened her eyes with a dazed look.

"Oh, what does this mean? Where am I?" she gasped.

Standish bent over her, and said, soothingly:

"Don't you remember, Miss Harding? I brought you here to see Hawthorne. He will be here in a moment."

"But—but—the train is moving," she cried, in a frightened voice.

"Hush!" he hissed, and suddenly Geraldine felt the cold muzzle of a pistol pressed against her warm, white temple, and a hoarse voice continued:

"You are at the mercy of a desperate man! Do not move or speak, or I will blow your brains out and then leap from the train in the darkness. I swear it. I have much to say to you, and I shall say it with my finger on the trigger of this pistol, ready to kill you if you utter one word without my permission. Now the conductor is coming in to take up our tickets. Do not dare to speak to him or show one sign of excitement."

Life is sweet to the young and loving, and Geraldine dared not disobey that hoarse command. She crouched, trembling in her seat while the gruff conductor took up the tickets and passed on to the next car.

They were again alone, and in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions Geraldine waited for the next words of her companion.

In his hoarse voice, vibrant with passion, she had suddenly recognized Clifford Standish.

She comprehended that he had set a trap for her, and that she had fallen into it. The horror of her thoughts no pen could tell!

He bent toward her as he sat on the opposite seat, and though her heart swelled with a terrible hate, she dared not utter a word of remonstrance, for she saw that, half-hidden by his coat-sleeve, he carried his deadly weapon ready to wreak vengeance on her for the least disobedience.

But though she dared not speak, Geraldine could not restrain the indignation that flashed upon him from her contemptuous eyes, and surely that glance was enough to wither him with its burning scorn.

But, unmoved by her wrath, Clifford Standish asked, calmly:

"Have you recognized me yet, Geraldine?"

She nodded in silent, ineffable scorn, and he went on:

"I have much to tell you, and when I am done you will not despise me as you do now, for I have been cruelly wronged and defamed, just to gratify the spite of envious people."

The dark, scornful eyes looked at him in silent amazement as he went on:

"Geraldine, that arrest on the stage last night was simply for the purpose of turning your heart against me. Another man envied me, and concocted that villainous plot to make you believe I was married, that he might win you himself. I have no wife, nor ever shall have, unless you will keep your promise to be mine."

His voice sank to the low, tremulous cadence that he had found so effective on the stage, but the unchanging scorn of the bright eyes assured him that she was not moved by his ranting.

Heaving a deep sigh, he went on, passionately:

"It was a deep-laid scheme of that contemptible fireman, that low fellow, to turn you against me. And you know I had no time to explain anything to you. I was simply dragged away like a dog! Well, when my case came up in court this morning, the woman who had been hired to testify against me broke down in the witness chair, and owned that she did not even know me. Hawthorne had bribed her, she said, to claim me for her husband. I was discharged, as I told you last night that I would be to-day. Had you not heard, Geraldine, of my discharge, cleared of the foul imputation on my honor?" he demanded, anxiously, wondering if her knowledge of the truth would enable her to cast back the falsehood in his teeth.

But Geraldine had heard nothing, so, when he said again, "Speak Geraldine, did you not know I was free?" she answered, simply:

"No, I did not know it."

He breathed a sigh of relief at her ignorance of his escape, and resumed his falsehoods with more self-confidence:

"I was free, but half broken-hearted over the thought of the ignominy to which I had been subjected and the cruel impression it had made on my betrothed bride."

He saw her shudder at the last two words, but he was pitiless in his resolve to sacrifice her to his mad passion.

"Ah, Geraldine, was it not a fiendish act to turn your heart against me like that?" he cried. "I left the court-house and went to the hotel to see you. All the members of the company received me joyfully, but they had cruel news for me. They told me you had left them for Hawthorne—that you were betrothed to him, and he had demanded your retirement from the stage. Was this true, Geraldine?"

She bowed a cold, affirmative answer.

"It was true! I knew it, and I was in despair," ranted Standish. "Oh, how easily a woman's heart can turn against a man! You might have waited a day, Geraldine, and given me a chance to clear myself from that false charge. But, no! in your wounded pride you turned against me, and pledged yourself to the traitor who had plotted that vile outrage—my arrest on the stage—to further his own base ends."

She sat listening dumbly while the train rushed on and on, bearing her farther and farther away from New York and her own true lover—for she knew in her heart that he was true, and that the actor was telling her vile falsehoods—and her poor heart sank like a stone in her breast.

Oh, what would be her fate now, she wondered in anguish, hating herself because she had fallen so easily into this fatal trap.

Standish continued, in a pleading tone:

"What could I do in my despair, darling, but oppose cunning to cunning, and fraud to fraud? I knew that if I came to you in my own person, I should not even be allowed to see you. My enemies would separate us, keep us apart so that you should never know how cruelly I had been wronged. So I planned to get you away from them and into my power. I determined to have my promised bride if I had to steal her away from our enemies. I knew," eagerly, "that when you heard the truth, sweet Geraldine, you would forgive me for this bold move, and love me again. So—we are on our way now to Chicago, and there you shall become my bride!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

A LEAF OUT OF HIS OWN BOOK

"As I came through the valley of Despair,
As I came through the valley, on my sight,
More awful than the darkness of the night,
Shone glimpses of a past that had been fair,
And memories of eyes that used to smile,
And wafts of perfume from a vanished isle,
And, like an arrow in my heart I heard
The last faint notes of Hope's expiring bird,
As I came through the valley."

Poor Geraldine! poor Geraldine! What a cruel ending this was to the Christmas Day that had dawned so auspiciously upon her life.

She had had a few hours of exquisite happiness—the pure and perfect happiness of tender mutual love, that brings heaven down to earth for young, ardent hearts.

* * "That passionate love of youth,
That comes but once in its perfect bliss—
A love that, in spite of its trust and truth,