"How dare you intrude yourself here after your vile persecutions of Geraldine? Your audacity is startling, and I should do quite right to hand you over to the police on the charge of abducting and intimidating an innocent young girl! But I abhor scandal, and for this reason I shall not have you punished, unless--you dare to annoy us again!" Recovering his hardihood, he muttered, sullenly: "Madame, I deny the truth of your statements. Your daughter promised to marry me!" "At the point of a revolver, yes, when, fearing for her life, she determined to temporize with you, hoping to throw you off your guard that she might escape your cowardly persecution. She has told me her story from beginning to end, and I shudder to think what might have been my dear girl's fate but for our meeting on the train!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitzgerald, flashing on him the scornful lightnings of her reproachful eyes. Realizing for the first time that Geraldine had duped him in her apparent acquiescence to his will, and feeling himself beaten for the time in the dangerous game he had played, he cowered sullenly before her as she pointed to the door, saying, authoritatively: "Now go, you hound! and never let me see your craven face again!" Defeated, humiliated, writhing under her womanly scorn, he slunk out of the room and from her presence, into the wintry streets whose chill he could not feel, so hotly was he raging in his inmost heart against the two women who had scorned him for his wickedness. "So you were playing on my credulity, laughing at me in your sleeve, pretty Geraldine!" he muttered, with a stifled oath. "Very well. You defeated me this time, but--look to yourself in the future!" So muttering, he turned toward the sleigh that he had left waiting for him, but, to his surprise, it was gone. For some unknown reason the driver had proved false to his engagement, and deserted his post. Cursing the man's stupidity, he walked some distance along the snowy streets in the piercing cold of the western air before he boarded a car to take him to his boarding-house on State street. Leaving the car, however, at an obscure side street with the intention of seeking a near-by saloon and concert hall, he crossed the street, and was proceeding on his way when suddenly he heard hurried footsteps behind, and then a hand clutched his arm whirling him fiercely around. "Wretch!" hissed a man's voice, vibrant with hate. "Wretch! So I have caught you at last! Where is she? Where is my Geraldine?" Under the glare of the electric lights that shone with ghastly whiteness on the snowy pavement, he found himself looking into the stern blue eyes of Harry Hawthorne. For two days the young man had been on his track, without one clew to reward his efforts, for the villain, hiding his identity under an assumed name, had been swallowed up, like a wave breaking on the shore, in the vast city of Chicago.