Mrs. Fitzgerald readily acquiesced, and gave Geraldine a liberal check for her friend's traveling expenses.
Geraldine flew to her room to write to her friend, and she did not fail to inquire of Cissy what had become of Harry Hawthorne.
"Tell him I have written to him and received no reply," she added, naively, in her keen anxiety.
She felt a little happier when the letter had been dispatched to Cissy. It would be a comfort to have her old friend with her, in spite of the fact that many of her mother's rich, fashionable friends had called and offered their friendship in affectionate terms.
But they were strange and new to Geraldine, and they could not make her happy yet. The transplanted flower had not taken root in this new, rich soil. It pined for its old habitation. It was strange to be a greenhouse exotic instead of a fresh wild-flower nodding to its mates beneath the free blue sky.
"But if I only had those I love with me, I should be supremely happy," she sighed, wistfully.
"There is no friend like an old friend,
Whose life-path mates our own,
Whose dawn and noon, whose even and end
Have known that we have known.
It may be when we read her face
We note a trace of care;
'Tis well that friends in life's last grace
Share sighs as smiles they share."
More than a week had passed since Clifford Standish's visit, and they saw and heard no more of him.
Both mother and daughter supposed that he had passed out of their lives forever.
But the handsome governess, Miss Erroll, might have told them a different story had she dared.