He ran over it hastily, his blue eyes flashing with anger and apprehension. "I never wrote this note--it is not in my writing! How did Geraldine ever make such a mistake?" he cried, hoarsely. "She read it hastily by a dim light," said Cissy. "And there is just enough likeness to my hand to have deceived her that way," he cried, in anguish, for the conviction of something dreadful had come to him. "Oh, my darling, you are the victim of some cruel plot," he groaned, his handsome face blanching to a deathly hue. Poor Cissy breathed, faintly: "Oh, who could have planned this outrage? Clifford Standish is the only man I know likely to be guilty of it. But he is in prison." "Have you not heard? The villain escaped from the officers at the door of the Chambers street court-house this morning, and is still at large. No doubt he wrote this fraudulent note; no doubt it was he who carried Geraldine off. Tell me what the wretch looked like." Then Cissy remembered that the man Rhodes had refused to enter the lighted room, and had been strangely taciturn, speaking only when necessity required, and then in a low, muffled voice. "Oh, I ought to have suspected him then. I was culpably careless and thoughtless, letting that poor child go with him," she thought, in an agony of distress. When she had described the man to Hawthorne, he declared his belief that Standish himself, with but slight disguise, had personated the mythical Jem Rhodes. "She is in the power of that fiend at this moment!" he exclaimed, starting up in a passion of grief and anguish that made poor Cissy burst out into hysterical weeping. He was rushing to the door, and he looked back at the sound of her sobs, and said, gently: "Don't take it so hard, Miss Carroll, for Heaven's sake. You are not to blame, neither was she, for that note was plausible enough to deceive any one. But I'll find her and bring her back to you, or I'll have that villain's cursed life!" CHAPTER XXV. UNDER SUSPICION. "Through the blue and frosty heavens Christmas stars were shining bright; Glistening lamps throughout the city Almost matched their gleaming light; While the winter snow was lying, And the winter winds were sighing, Long ago one Christmas night." We must follow Clifford Standish on his successful flight from justice that Christmas morning, when the spirit of the day was so much in every heart that no one who witnessed his escape cared to give chase to the fugitive. Perhaps, indeed, they thought that one who could outwit two stalwart policemen deserved his liberty. Be that as it may, the actor made good his escape to a place of refuge, where he lay a while _perdu_, concocting new plans for retrieving last night's disaster. The thought that he had lost pretty Geraldine forever was bitterness to his heart. But he felt just as certain of it as if he had witnessed all that had transpired last night.