They parted, and he hurried to the theatre, where she had told him Geraldine had gone.
Securing a seat in the orchestra circle, in the desirable concealment of a pillar, he alternately watched the heiress and the play.
An angry sneer curled his lips as he saw the new leading man in the play was even superior to himself in the role of the hero.
"So I can never get back my position in that company," he mused. "Well, no matter! I shall marry the heiress, and if the old woman cuts up rough and won't give us any of her daughter's money, we can go on the stage, and the elopement will be an advertisement for us."
As he watched Geraldine in all her beauty, sitting with her friends, his passion for her grew deeper, and he mentally hugged himself at the thought of how soon he would have her in his power.
When her carriage rolled away, and he noted the lingering glance sent after it by Cameron Clemens, he sneered, grimly:
"Bah! what fools love makes of us all! There is Clemens as madly in love with that hateful Cissy Carroll as I am with pretty Geraldine. He has been in love with her ever since Azuba Aylesford forced them apart, to marry him herself. Egad! I did them a good turn when I flattered Mrs. Clemens into eloping with me; and if the Carroll girl ever gets him back she may thank me for ridding him of his incumbrance, though she hates me like poison!"
He turned away with a harsh laugh, and went his way through the gloomy shadows of the winter night, like a thing of evil omen.
And in all that vast city of Chicago where crime stalks abroad under the cover of darkness, there was not a soul more lost to goodness than that of this man.