"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: