"I have loved thee—fondly loved thee!
No one but God can know
The struggle and the agony
It cost to let thee go.
But woman's pride usurps my heart,
And surges to my brow.
To see thy cold indifference!
We must be strangers now."
Francis S. Smith.
"Will no answer ever come?" sighed Geraldine, as she watched the papers, day after day, for an answer to her personal.
"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," it is said, and her suspense was cruel and torturing. Not even Cissy's presence could assuage her pain, although it was borne in torturing silence.
One morning, while she was searching the newspaper columns, as usual, her eyes gleamed with a sudden light of pleasure, and she looked up at Cissy, exclaiming:
"Only think, dear—the Clemens Company will begin a week's engagement in Chicago to-morrow evening."
The quick color flew to Cissy's face, but she nodded with apparent indifference.
Geraldine continued:
"They will play 'Laurel Vane.' Oh, do you remember the night in New York when I played it, Cissy, and our terrible interruption by the appearance of the men who arrested Mr. Standish? I was very unhappy that night, for I believed that Harry Hawthorne had married Daisy Odell, as that wretch declared. Oh! how it all comes back to me now—my jealous misery when I stood at the wings watching you all in Mrs. Stansbury's box! But, oh, the happiness that came to me later, when I learned the real truth!"
She leaned her fair head down on Cissy's shoulder, and sighed: