Francis S. Smith.
Geraldine hastened to her room and scrawled a hasty line to Clifford Standish:
"You may call at eight o'clock this evening."
When she had dispatched the note by a servant, she threw herself, weeping, on a sofa.
Her fond heart was almost broken by her mother's command to give up her lover.
"I will not obey her, for she has no right to demand such a sacrifice from me!" she sobbed, resentfully.
It was true that she had already written to Hawthorne, telling him all that had happened to her since she had seen him last, and adding that no change of fortune could turn her heart from its love. She had begged him to answer her letter as soon as received, and added a postscript to ask him to go and tell Cissy Carroll what she had written.
But an adverse fate seemed always to come between Geraldine and her heart's choice.
Hawthorne, who was in Chicago by this time, vainly seeking his lost love, was fated not to receive the letter.