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

"Hello! what are you running away like this for, eh?"

"Don't you know me, Doctor Rowe? Come with me, for God's sake, into the street. I was looking out of the window, and saw a murder being done."

They rushed into the street, but the little delay had enabled the murderer to make his escape.

Nothing was to be seen of any human creature but that still form lying there in a drift of snow that had turned crimson with the blood that was spurting from his breast.

With exclamations of pity and horror, they bent over him, the physician quickly feeling for his heart.

"Is he dead?" asked Leroy Hill, his laughing dark eyes growing soft with pity.

"Not yet; his heart beats faintly, but this flow of blood must be stopped at once. It is very fortunate we came to him so quickly," returned the old physician, tearing open Hawthorne's shirt-bosom and preparing to stanch the flow of blood.

Several people came out of the house and joined them, and a crowd collected quickly, a policeman coming at last around the corner.

Those who could assist the doctor did so, others plied each other with questions.

"Who is he?"

"Who killed him?"

No one could answer either question.

No cards nor letters were found on the stranger's person to prove his identity, and no one present recognized him.

Leroy Hill could only tell that he had seen the encounter from an upper window, and that the assassin had escaped before he reached the street.

Doctor Rowe looked up, asking: "Has any one 'phoned for an ambulance to take him to the hospital? His last chance of life will soon be gone if he has to lie here in the street."

A bystander interposed, sarcastically:

"And he won't have much chance of life among some of those brutal nurses at the hospital, neither."

Mr. Hill's absent friend had come up a moment before, and the young man turned to him, saying, kindly:

"Let's give the poor devil a chance for his life, Ralph. Can't we get a room in the house and hire a nurse for him?"

"Why, certainly, Lee. Glad you thought of it! We will put him in my bedroom and I can sleep on the lounge in my study," returned Ralph Washburn who was an author, and had the kindest heart in the world.

And so Harry Hawthorne found true friends among those jolly, big-hearted Westerners, and, under their faithful ministrations, he came back to the life that had used him so hardly.

And then they found that he was inclined to throw a bit of a mystery around himself, for he was unwilling to answer questions about anything.

"Don't think me ungrateful, boys," he said to Ralph and Lee, as they sat by his bed. "God only knows how grateful I am for your goodness, and I hope to prove it to you some day. I'm from the North; I don't belong in Chicago—I'll own that. I won't tell my name yet—call me Jack Daly; that will do as well as anything until the time comes when I can safely confess all."

They liked him in spite of his mysterious ways, for there was too much nobility in his face to lead any one astray. They felt sure that he was worthy of honor and respect.

"But, Jack Daly," began Leroy Hill, smiling as he ran his white hand through his clustering auburn curls, "I'm going to ask you one question. Do you mean to shield the man who tried to murder you?"

"To shield him? Was he not a stranger?"

"I do not believe he was a stranger to you. You did not meet as strangers. You had a terrible quarrel. Perhaps it was about a woman. Listen: I found a bloody glove in the snow that night, and it belonged either to you or to him. I deciphered in it a name—Clifford Standish!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the patient.

"Then that is your name?"

"No."

"Then it was your assailant's, and I am bound to put the police in possession of this important clew."

The patient raised himself on his elbow, crying, feverishly:

"For God's sake! spare that villain, Mr. Hill; not for his sake, no, no—but for a woman's sake! Listen: there is a tragedy behind what you know. A woman's honor is involved, and my silence is its only safeguard!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"STOP THE CARRIAGE!"

"Come love! Until thy face I see,
All things seem valueless to me;
Nor singing birds nor blooming flowers
Can make less sad the weary hours.
Friends cannot cheer, mirth cannot move,
While thou art absent, dearest love.
Dejection holds my heart in thrall
Till thou art here, my all-in-all."

    Francis S. Smith.
"How strange, oh, how strange, that Harry does not answer my letter!" cried Geraldine, impatiently.

About ten days had passed since she had posted the letter with her own hands to Hawthorne, and for days she had been waiting in silent anxiety for his reply.

But, as we know that he had left New York suddenly, without leaving directions to forward his mail, we can understand the cause of the silence that was torturing her tender heart. Since the day when Geraldine had impulsively defied her mother to turn her heart from her betrothed, a slight reserve had grown up between them that nothing seemed to bridge. Mrs. Fitzgerald never brought up again the subject of her daughter's lover. She was bitterly and unreasonably offended at the stand the girl had taken.

So she became more chary of showing affection to Geraldine, and lavished caresses on her two younger children, the charming Earl and Claire.

Geraldine, who was as loving as she was proud and willful, suffered sorely from her mother's coldness. She began to feel like an alien in the great, splendid mansion. In secret she pined for Cissy and her old happy life among the girls at O'Neill's before her own mad ambition for the stage had cut her off from those pleasant days forever.

"I have a great mind to run away from my grand home and ambitious mother and go back to Cissy," she sobbed one night to her lonely pillow.

But she did not have the heart to carry out her threat, for Mrs. Fitzgerald was kind in spite of her reserve, lavishing beautiful gowns and jewels upon her, as if to make up to her for her heart-loneliness. Dressmakers and milliners had carte blanche, and Geraldine had an outfit fine enough for a young princess.

These beautiful gowns, these flashing jewels, and the luxury of her home would have made the lovely girl very happy, but for the cruel separation from her lover. Without him there was a blank in everything.

"Where I am the halls are gilded,
Stored with pictures bright and rare;
Strains of deep, melodious music
Float upon the perfumed air.