But the letter contained other news that was very puzzling.
"Harry followed me to Chicago on the next train, the darling boy! But how strange that he has never come to me! Does he know where I am? Is he in the same city with me?" were questions that repeated themselves over and over in her bewildered brain.
She could understand now why he had never answered her letter. Of course, he had never received it, since he was on her trail following her abductor and his victim in their flight from New York.
"But why, oh, why does he not come to me? Is it possible he cannot find me, my dear, dear, love? Ah, I have it now! He is following Clifford Standish up, and of course he can find no trace of me," she decided, and immediately resolved to insert personals in the prominent newspapers of the next day in the hope of reaching him.
When she had exchanged her carriage dress for a lovely house robe, fluttering with lace and ribbons, she sought her mother, with Cissy's letter.
Mrs. Fitzgerald rejoiced with her daughter over the coming of her friend, but she said not a word about Harry Hawthorne.
She was secretly annoyed at learning that he had followed Geraldine to Chicago. She thought, in dismay:
"He may be turning up here at any moment, claiming my daughter, and she is so headstrong, she will never consent to give him up. What shall I do?"
But her woman's wit could suggest no answer to the question.