But the train with the fugitives was two hours ahead of the desperate lover, and long ere he reached Chicago the objects of his pursuit were at their destination—Standish in a second-rate lodging-house, Geraldine, with her mother, at her magnificent home on Prairie avenue, which holds to Chicago the rank of Fifth avenue to New York.
To Geraldine it was a wonderful transition, this change from the simple life of a working-girl in New York to this palatial home, where obsequious servants sprang to gratify her slightest wish, and where a devoted mother found time even in the anguish of widowhood to lavish on her the fondest love and care.
And in that home she had found another charming surprise—a dear little half-brother and sister, the children of her mother's second marriage—Earl, a beautiful, manly boy of ten, and Claire, a lovely fairy of seven years.
These two children had been left at home with their governess while their parents made a hurried business trip to New York—the trip that had ended so disastrously to the father, who had been in declining health for several years.
Bitter was the grief of the little ones when called to gaze for the last time on his beloved face, and Geraldine's tears mingled with theirs, for she knew that had he lived he must have proved to her a tenderer parent than the heartless father who had deserted her mother and then stolen her child and left her to grow up in poverty and heart-loneliness.
The second day after their arrival in Chicago the sacred remains of the beloved dead were taken to a crematory, and reduced to ashes, in accordance with the will of the deceased.
But the wife to whom he had been so kind and devoted could not bear to consign his remains to kindred dust.
She had the precious ashes sealed in a beautiful box of wrought silver and gold studded with precious jewels, and kept this box in her own apartments, a sacred treasure, dear to her for its precious memories.
When all these solemn ceremonies were over, the mother was ready to hear the story that Geraldine was waiting to pour into her ears.
A note from Clifford Standish arrived the morning after Mr. Fitzgerald's cremation, asking when he might call on Geraldine.