How she loathed and hated the smooth, smiling villain before her, who, while pretending to love her, had actually threatened her with death; who held at that moment, under his hand, a deadly weapon with which to compel her obedience.
The poor girl sat looking at him with angry tears in her large brown eyes, her cheeks alternately red and pale with the blood that rushed to and fro from her wildly throbbing heart. At one moment she would feel ill enough to faint, the next her burning indignation would drive away all weakness.
She did not believe one word of the smooth story he had related to her, hoping that her girlish credulity would accept it for truth.
And she was determined that she would die before she would marry the wretch.
But how was she to escape if he stood guard over her all the way to Chicago, with a deadly weapon in his hand?
If she shrieked out to the conductor for assistance, her abductor would kill her on the spot.
It was a situation to blanch the bravest cheek, and Geraldine was only a poor, weak girl. No wonder that the blood ran cold in her veins with despair.
She could see nothing before her but death—certain death at the hands of the desperate villain by her side.
For he was determined to marry her or kill her; and of the two calamities she resolved to choose the last.
But—and a faint spark of hope came to her—if she could only get him to leave her side a while, she might escape—might jump from the flying train in the darkness.