"What could I do in my despair, darling, but oppose cunning to cunning, and fraud to fraud? I knew that if I came to you in my own person, I should not even be allowed to see you. My enemies would separate us, keep us apart so that you should never know how cruelly I had been wronged. So I planned to get you away from them and into my power. I determined to have my promised bride if I had to steal her away from our enemies. I knew," eagerly, "that when you heard the truth, sweet Geraldine, you would forgive me for this bold move, and love me again. So—we are on our way now to Chicago, and there you shall become my bride!"
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
A LEAF OUT OF HIS OWN BOOK.
"As I came through the valley of Despair,
As I came through the valley, on my sight,
More awful than the darkness of the night,
Shone glimpses of a past that had been fair,
And memories of eyes that used to smile,
And wafts of perfume from a vanished isle,
And, like an arrow in my heart I heard
The last faint notes of Hope's expiring bird,
As I came through the valley."
Poor Geraldine! poor Geraldine! What a cruel ending this was to the Christmas Day that had dawned so auspiciously upon her life.
She had had a few hours of exquisite happiness—the pure and perfect happiness of tender mutual love, that brings heaven down to earth for young, ardent hearts.
* * "That passionate love of youth,
That comes but once in its perfect bliss—
A love that, in spite of its trust and truth,
Seems never to thrive in a world like this."
From bliss to despair—that was the story of Geraldine's one day.
But for the shining ring on her little hand she would have believed it all a dream, so swiftly had the brightness fled.