For three days the monotonous blizzard raged, and the snow grew deeper and deeper. Geraldine felt as if she should go mad.
She wondered despairingly if she should ever get free from the power of her cruel jailer, or if she should die here, as old Jane had boldly threatened.
The woman had become very impatient over Geraldine's continued weeping, and one day she said, roughly:
"You might as well hush that snivelin' an' make your mind up ter marry that man, for if you don't he'll kill you!"
"Kill me! He dare not!"
"He'll dare anything, and if he don't, I will. Sho! I don't mind killin' anybody. I beat a poor-house chile to death last year, and only three months ago I p'isened my husband with arsenic. An' that isn't all I done, neither, for——" She paused in the recital of her crimes, for the listener had dropped limply in a swoon, overcome by the horror of the story.
Oh, the weary days, and the terror-haunted nights! How did the poor captive drag through them? The wonder to her ever afterward was that she did not go mad.
At last Clifford Standish came.
It was a full week since he had brought her there and the storm had somewhat abated in violence, but the snow still lay deep upon the ground, and the wailing of the winter wind was like the knell of hope in her ears.
The door opened, and her cowardly abductor stood within the room, gazing at his cruel work.