She was honorable and high-minded, and shrank from using harsh or underhand means to break off Geraldine's engagement.
Geraldine saw the lack of sympathy in her mother's mobile face, and thought, sadly:
"She is still unrelenting. I shall have no sympathy in my sorrow until Cissy comes. Then I can whisper all my grief to her faithful heart."
And she longed all the more anxiously for to-morrow's sun that would shine on the coming of her beloved friend.
And, to lighten her suspense, she spent some time superintending the arrangement of the beautiful room next to her own that was being prepared for Miss Carroll's occupancy. Some of her own favorite books were carried in—Cissy was inordinately fond of reading—flowers were lavished here and there. When it was all ready, the pretty room in pink and silver was dainty enough for a princess.
"Cissy will enjoy it so much. She likes pretty things. And I shall buy her some dainty gowns, and—lots of things! She shall see how I love her!" the girl whispered to herself, with tears of joy in her beautiful brown eyes.
Then she went to her desk and wrote out and sent the personals she had thought of to the newspapers for to-morrow.
"Mamma would not approve, I know, but perhaps she will never find out what I have done. But, at any risk, I would have done it. I cannot give up my own true love! I believe God made us for each other," she thought, tenderly.
She spent a restless night, thinking of Cissy's coming to-morrow, and wondering where her lover was to-night in this great Western city, little dreaming that he was speeding from it in the deepening night.