Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl; or, Wedded to Her Choice — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl; or, Wedded to Her Choice
John Stuart Mill · en
An ambulance was called to convey him to the hospital, and the
physician in charge looked very serious over the case.
"It is impossible to say yet whether he is mortally injured or not.
He may simply be stunned from the bad cut on his head, or he may have
sustained internal injuries," he said to the anxious crowd about him,
and then the wounded man was lifted carefully into the ambulance, and
driven to the Bellevue Hospital.
Clifford Standish turned away from the scene with a diabolical smile of
triumph on his thin lips, hissing cruelly:
"The Fates have played me a good turn, and I will make the most of my
opportunity. Whether Harry Hawthorne lives or dies, I will come between
him and Geraldine so effectually that when he returns to her it will be
impossible to win her from me. Of course, I shall not go near her this
evening. She must be kept in ignorance of his accident, if possible,
so that she may think he has forsaken her. Ha, ha, ha! what a weary
waiting she will have for him this evening, and how angry she will be
because he has broken his engagement."
Geraldine did, indeed, have a weary waiting for her lover, and her
disappointment was keen and bitter at his failure to come.
But so absolute was her faith in him that she did not become angry, but
thought, excusingly:
"Something has happened to detain him, surely. Perhaps he was called
out to some dreadful fire. I shall be sure to receive a note from him
to-morrow, explaining all, craving my pardon, and appointing another
date to call."
She was so anxious, too, for Cissy to see him. She felt sure that her
friend would like him better than she had liked Clifford Standish.
When she reached home that day, she rested a while, then went down to
the store, and remained until closing time, returning with Cissy, who
was cold and indifferent, for Geraldine's non-return the night before
had filled her with alarm over the fate of the willful girl.
But Geraldine, eager for her friend's sympathy, put aside her former
petulance, and poured into Cissy's ear the story of the day and
night--the accident that had deprived her of the actor's company--the
new friends she had made, her fall into the water, her rescue, her
charming time at Newburgh--except that her girlish heart had gone from
her own keeping into that of noble, handsome, tender Harry Hawthorne.
But Cissy did not need to be told the latter. She read it in the blush
and smile of the innocent girl.
"How does Love speak?
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek,
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye--
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh--
Thus doth Love speak.