"So," continued Geraldine, smiling also, but at his gullibility, "you may put away your pistol, for it makes me very nervous to see it. And you do not need to stand guard over me, and I am ready to keep my promise to marry you." "Geraldine," he cried, transported with joy at her sweetness, and bent to kiss her, but she repulsed him with shy grace. "No, no--wait till we are married, sir!" "Very well, darling; but--will you promise me not to speak to any one on the train but myself?" suspiciously. "I promise you that," she answered, carelessly, hoping that he would leave her, but it seemed that he had no such amiable intention. He removed the glasses under which he had posed as Jem Rhodes, the better to feast his eyes on her peerless beauty, and remained by her side, talking to her until she was wild with disgust. Yet she had to wear her brightest smile, and answer him with seeming vivacity, to keep up the impression she had made of satisfaction with her fate. Meanwhile the train rushed on to the first station and passed it without interruption. Hawthorne's telegram had not overtaken the fugitives. Poor Geraldine's fate was sealed, and Standish was triumphant. "I wish something would happen," she thought, desperately. "I wish the train would get off the track and hurt him, and nobody else, so that I might escape!" How strangely our impetuous wishes are answered sometimes. Something did happen to Geraldine the very next moment. The conductor came back from the Pullman coach, and, pausing at her seat, said, respectfully: "I beg your pardon, miss, but there is a lady back in the Pullman whose husband has just died suddenly from a frightful hemorrhage. In her distress there is not a woman to comfort her except an unfeeling negro maid, who is too busy flirting with the porter to attend to her duties. Could you--would you go back in there and speak a word of comfort to the poor soul?" His gruff voice was very kindly now that his sympathies were awakened, and he gazed almost pleadingly at the girl who looked, in turn, questioningly at Standish. He hesitated a moment, as if about to refuse, then answered, quietly: "Yes, go, and I will accompany you," and, like a jailer guarding a prisoner, he followed her to the Pullman coach. CHAPTER XXX. A STARTLING DECLARATION. "Eyes that are closed to earthly sight, Can never wake to weep; Nor pain, nor woe, nor grief, nor blight, Can move that slumber deep. "So hearts of dust all griefs forsake, They never break nor bleed; The living hearts that throb and ache Our tender pity need."