MUTUAL LOVE.
"Oh, happy love! where love like this is found!
Oh, heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I've paced much this weary mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare:
If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
'Tis when a youthful, loving modest pair
In other's arms breathe out love's tender tale
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale."
It was a long distance from the theatre to Cissy's home, but the distance was short to Geraldine and her lover, as they sat side by side in the cab, almost wishing that the ride would never come to an end, it was so heavenly sweet to be together again.
Both of them were in secret ecstasies at the catastrophe to Clifford Standish that had seemed to remove him from their path forever.
The future seemed to stretch before them roseate, shining, love-crowned, blissful.
Cissy did her best to explain away all the shadows that had come between them all.
"Geraldine, I wrote you five letters. Why didn't you answer them, you cruel girl?"
"Five letters? Oh, Cissy, I never received one of them; and it almost broke my heart that you would not answer all the long ones I wrote to you."
"You wrote to me? How strange that I did not get a line from you, dear. And I was so grieved, so uneasy over you. I thought you were proud and stubborn. But, tell me—did you post them yourself?"
"No; I always gave them to Mr. Standish to send out with the company's mail."