"I will not accept a love that is given me only because it was left by one who did not prize it."
Others, more humble, will gladly accept the grateful love of a wounded heart that finds consolation in their tenderness.
Clifford Standish, madly in love with Geraldine, was glad to accept such crumbs of love as might fall to him from the royal feast that had been spread for Harry Hawthorne.
So he hovered by her side, he paid her the most delicate attentions, anticipating every wish, and found ample reward as he saw himself gaining in her grateful regard.
At the same time the arch-traitor was intercepting the few letters that came to her, and the ones she wrote to Miss Carroll.
For Geraldine had long ago gotten over her pet with her friend, since she know in her heart how dear she was to Cissy, and that the girl had advised her for her own good.
Geraldine had found out that the career of an actress—even a young, pretty, and popular one—is not always strewn with roses.
She had to study hard, and she did not enjoy traveling all day, or even half a day, and then appearing on the boards at night. Sometimes the hotel accommodations of country towns where they stopped over were wretchedly indifferent. Sometimes her head ached miserably, but she must appear on the boards, all the same. And the free-and-easy ways of some of the company did not please the fastidious taste of the girl.
Now and then she found her thoughts returning to the old days behind the counter at O'Neill's with Cissy and the other girls, with an almost pathetic yearning. Secretly she longed to be back again.
How she wished that Cissy would write to her now, and beg her to return, so that she might have an excuse for following the dictates of her heart.