THAT WORD WAS LIKE A DAGGER IN HER HEART.
"Words are mighty, words are living;
Serpents with their venomous stings,
Or bright angels crowding round us,
With heaven's light upon their wings.
"Every word has its own spirit,
True or false, that never dies;
Every word man's lips have uttered
Echoes in God's skies."
Pete, the driver of the sleigh in which Clifford Standish had so successfully accomplished the abduction of Geraldine, had told the truth about the affair.
Geraldine had indeed fainted at some words he had said to her, and while in this condition he had lifted her in his arms and carried her aboard the train.
Ere she recovered from her long spell of unconsciousness, the train was flying across the country in the gloom of the falling night, that, dark as it was, could not equal the blackness of the fate to which Clifford Standish had destined his hapless victim.
On reaching the station he had said, abruptly, to Geraldine:
"Kindly wait here for me while I go and find Hawthorne."
In reality he secured tickets for Chicago, and, returning to her, he said, still in that strange, muffled voice of his: