can tell you all; fears, doubts unheeding,
While I can be near you, hold your hand,
Looking right into your eyes and reading
Reassurance that you understand.
"Yet I wrote it through, then lingered, thinking
Of its reaching you what hour, what day,
Till I felt my heart and courage sinking
With a strange, new, wondering dismay.
"'Will my letter fall,' I wondered, sadly,
'On her mood like some discordant tone,
Or be welcomed tenderly and gladly?
Will she be with others, or alone?
"It may find her too absorbed to read it,
Save with hurried glance and careless air;
Sad and weary, she may scarcely heed it;
Gay and happy, she may hardly care.
"If perhaps now, while my tears are falling,
She is dreaming quietly alone,
She will hear my love's far echo calling,
Feel my spirit drawing near her own.
"Wondering at the strange, mysterious power
That has touched her heart, then she will say:
'Some one whom I love this very hour
Thinks of me, and loves me far away.'"
Poor Geraldine! what a hopeless waiting she had for the letter that never came!
How could he bear the wistful light in her sad brown eyes, the wretch who had robbed her young life of happiness?
In his keeping rested the letters of the two fond girls to each other—the letters that would have brought happiness to three sad hearts.
And the weeks slipped into months while they echoed in their souls the poet's plaint:
"The solemn Sea of Silence lies between us;
I know thou livest and thou lovest me;
And yet I wish some white ship would come sailing
Across the ocean bearing news of thee.
"The dead calm awes me with its awful stillness,
And anxious doubts and fears disturb my breast.
I only ask some little wave of language
To stir this vast infinitude of rest.
"Too deep the language which the spirit utters;
Too vast the knowledge which my soul hath stirred.
Send some white ship across the Sea of Silence,
And interrupt its utterance with a word."
It was two months now since they had gone upon the road, but not a word had Geraldine received. It seemed to her as if the past days were a dream, so different was her life now—all whirl, confusion, and excitement.
Once she had thought this would be charming. Now she found it the reverse.
How glad she was to hear that the company would go back to New York in time for Christmas. She was so tired of the West, where they had been all these weeks.
When they were on their homeward way, they stopped over for a night at a pretty West Virginia town a few hundred miles from New York.
They had come straight through from Chicago, and the stop-over was very agreeable to the weary members of the company.
They arrived in the afternoon, and the tired travelers, after resting a while at their romantic hotel on the banks of the beautiful Greenbrier River, set out to explore the little town of Alderson, first hurrying to the post-office for their letters, which they expected to be awaiting them there.
Geraldine did not expect any mail, poor girl! She waited at the door while Clifford Standish went in and came out with a little budget for himself.
"Nothing for you, Geraldine. It seems that Miss Carroll is still unforgiving," he laughed, without noting the sensitive quiver of her scarlet lips.
They walked on, and she pretended to be absorbed in contemplation of the beautiful mountain scenery, while he ran over his letters.
"Let us cross the railroad and walk on the bridge over there," she said, at last.
It was a beautiful sunny day, very calm and mild for December. They loitered on the broad bridge that spanned the romantic river between the two towns, Alderson and North Alderson, and while she watched the lapsing river and the mountain peaks against the clear blue sky, he read to her bits of his letters from New York.
"Here's one that will interest you," he laughed, meaningly, and read:
"'Well, old fellow, there's nothing that I know in the way of interesting news just now, unless that a girl you used to be sweet on is going to be married to-morrow. It's little Daisy Odell, you know, of Newburgh. She's been visiting a married sister here, and caught a beau. He's a fireman named Harry Hawthorne, a big, handsome fellow, the hero of several fires. The marriage will take place at Mrs. Stansbury's, and I've an invitation to it.'"
He looked from the letter to her face, and saw that she was deadly pale and grief-stricken.
"Oh, will you let me read that for myself?" she gasped, as if she could scarcely believe him.
"Why, certainly," he answered, but as he was handing her the crumpled sheet, the wind caught it somehow, and fluttered it beyond reach over the rail and down into the river.
"Oh! oh! oh!" he cried, with pretended dismay, but his outstretched hand could not grasp it.
"It's gone; but no matter—the news must be true, for Charlie Butler wrote it, and he always tells the truth," he said, carelessly.
And how was the unsuspecting girl to know that no such words were written in the letter, and that it was from a woman, instead of Charlie Butler?
CHAPTER XIII.
TORTURED TO MADNESS
"So the truth's out. I'll grasp it like a snake;
It will not slay me. My heart shall not break.
"I was so happy I could not make him blest!
So falsely dreamed I was his first and best!
"He'll keep that other woman from my sight;
I know not if her face be foul or bright;
I only know that it is his delight."
Geraldine was proud, very proud—and she thought she had quite overcome her hopeless love for Harry Hawthorne.
But the sudden, unexpected news of his marriage, that she never thought of doubting, struck her with the suddenness of an awful blow, beating down pride and reserve at one terrible stroke.
She realized all at once that her heart had still kept alive a little fire of hope burning before the shrine of its unacknowledged love. The quenching of this spark of hope was almost like the going out of life itself.
The other members of the party had gone on to the other side of the bridge and she was alone with Clifford Standish—alone with the agony of soul that blanched her sweet face to death-like pallor, and made her clutch at the rails, gasping out that she was ill, dying.
The arch-villain caught her swaying form and held it tenderly in his arms, while her white, unconscious face rested against his shoulder.
Some country people walking over the bridge at that moment stared in amazement, and going on to town, reported that, "those actor-folks were carrying on dreadful on the bridge—hugging right before folks."
But neither of the two participants was troubled over this