"But thousand evil things there are that hate To look on happiness. These hurt, impede, And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate, Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine and bleed." Cissy went back to her lonely rooms, stirred up the fire to a brighter blaze in the tiny stove, then sat down to a dreary retrospection of past days, her small hands folded idly in her lap, her dark head bowed in sadness. The sight of the handsome actor-manager, Cameron Clemens, had brought her memories from the past sweet and bitter in a breath, kindling old love and renewing old pain. "How dared he come? He must have known that Geraldine was with me! Did he think I would ever willingly meet him again?" she murmured, bitterly; then started to her feet, for there was another masculine rap upon the door. "Who is it this time?" she wondered, as she opened the door. A cry of surprise came from her lips for there stood Harry Hawthorne, handsome as a picture, in citizen's dress, his fireman's uniform laid aside, his stately figure looking its best in a long fur-lined overcoat. "Good-evening, Miss Carroll. May I come in?" he asked, gayly, with that ring of happiness in his musical voice one hears from a recently accepted lover. "Come in," Cissy answered, mechanically, in her amazement, letting him enter and close the door ere she asked, uneasily: "Where's Geraldine? Didn't she come back with you?" "With me? I don't understand you. I've just got away from my duties at the engine-house, and I thought if you and Geraldine didn't mind going out at night, we could have our sleigh-ride yet. There will be moonlight after a while." Cissy grasped the back of a chair to steady herself. Her face was pale, her dove-eyes dilated. "But--didn't you send a sleigh here just now for Geraldine?" she gasped. It was his turn now to look startled, and his eyes went from her face to the next room as he exclaimed: "Isn't Geraldine here now?" "No, no--of course not. Didn't I just tell you that she went away just now in a sleigh that you sent to bring her to the engine-house?" answered Cissy, turning up the light in a mechanical way, as women will attend to trifles even in trouble. She saw that he was deadly pale and excited, and he said, in a strained voice: "But I did not send any sleigh. There must be some mistake." "There is treachery somewhere. Oh, why did I let her go, poor child?" cried Cissy, with a sudden awful presentiment of evil. He sank into a chair, trembling with dread. "Tell me quickly what you mean--give me every clew you can--for I must go in search of her," he exclaimed, anxiously. And Cissy told him about the man, Jem Rhodes, and the note, and the elegant sleigh in which Geraldine had gone away so blithely, her rosy face radiant with joy, thinking to meet her lover. "Why, there is the note now," she said, taking it up from the table where Geraldine had left it, and handing it to Hawthorne.