He sank into a chair, trembling with dread.
"Tell me quickly what you mean—give me every clew you can—for I must go in search of her," he exclaimed, anxiously.
And Cissy told him about the man, Jem Rhodes, and the note, and the elegant sleigh in which Geraldine had gone away so blithely, her rosy face radiant with joy, thinking to meet her lover.
"Why, there is the note now," she said, taking it up from the table where Geraldine had left it, and handing it to Hawthorne.
He ran over it hastily, his blue eyes flashing with anger and apprehension.
"I never wrote this note—it is not in my writing! How did Geraldine ever make such a mistake?" he cried, hoarsely.
"She read it hastily by a dim light," said Cissy.
"And there is just enough likeness to my hand to have deceived her that way," he cried, in anguish, for the conviction of something dreadful had come to him. "Oh, my darling, you are the victim of some cruel plot," he groaned, his handsome face blanching to a deathly hue.
Poor Cissy breathed, faintly:
"Oh, who could have planned this outrage? Clifford Standish is the only man I know likely to be guilty of it. But he is in prison."