It was a beautiful sunny day, very calm and mild for December. They loitered on the broad bridge that spanned the romantic river between the two towns, Alderson and North Alderson, and while she watched the lapsing river and the mountain peaks against the clear blue sky, he read to her bits of his letters from New York. "Here's one that will interest you," he laughed, meaningly, and read: "'Well, old fellow, there's nothing that I know in the way of interesting news just now, unless that a girl you used to be sweet on is going to be married to-morrow. It's little Daisy Odell, you know, of Newburgh. She's been visiting a married sister here, and caught a beau. He's a fireman named Harry Hawthorne, a big, handsome fellow, the hero of several fires. The marriage will take place at Mrs. Stansbury's, and I've an invitation to it.'" He looked from the letter to her face, and saw that she was deadly pale and grief-stricken. "Oh, will you let me read that for myself?" she gasped, as if she could scarcely believe him. "Why, certainly," he answered, but as he was handing her the crumpled sheet, the wind caught it somehow, and fluttered it beyond reach over the rail and down into the river. "Oh! oh! oh!" he cried, with pretended dismay, but his outstretched hand could not grasp it. "It's gone; but no matter--the news must be true, for Charlie Butler wrote it, and he always tells the truth," he said, carelessly. And how was the unsuspecting girl to know that no such words were written in the letter, and that it was from a woman, instead of Charlie Butler? CHAPTER XIII. TORTURED TO MADNESS. "So the truth's out. I'll grasp it like a snake; It will not slay me. My heart shall not break. "I was so happy I could not make him blest! So falsely dreamed I was his first and best! "He'll keep that other woman from my sight; I know not if her face be foul or bright; I only know that it is his delight." Geraldine was proud, very proud--and she thought she had quite overcome her hopeless love for Harry Hawthorne. But the sudden, unexpected news of his marriage, that she never thought of doubting, struck her with the suddenness of an awful blow, beating down pride and reserve at one terrible stroke. She realized all at once that her heart had still kept alive a little fire of hope burning before the shrine of its unacknowledged love. The quenching of this spark of hope was almost like the going out of life itself. The other members of the party had gone on to the other side of the bridge and she was alone with Clifford Standish--alone with the agony of soul that blanched her sweet face to death-like pallor, and made her clutch at the rails, gasping out that she was ill, dying. The arch-villain caught her swaying form and held it tenderly in his arms, while her white, unconscious face rested against his shoulder.