Arrangements were speedily made, and after a visit to a detective, the three friends left for New York. CHAPTER XL. "IT IS LIKE SUICIDE!" "Round the post-office window are pressing A motley and turbulent throng. All eagerly bent on possessing The letter they've looked for so long. To some come dark tidings of sorrow, To others come tidings of bliss; Uncertain is every to-morrow, And the world like the post-office is." FRANCIS S. SMITH. All unconscious of the fact that she had been so near to the lover for whom she mourned, Geraldine returned home with her mother, and even as they went up the steps the postman followed on his afternoon round and placed two letters in her hand. She glanced at them, and a cry of joy broke from her lips as she saw that one bore the New York postmark and was in Cissy's familiar hand. The other one was postmarked Chicago, and was addressed to the governess, Miss Erroll. And if Geraldine could have guessed how fatally that letter concerned herself, she would have been justified in tearing it to fragments and scattering it in wrath to the four winds of heaven. If some saving hypnotic power had but impelled her to this course, what suffering she would have been spared. But in her joy over Cissy's letter, she scarcely gave a thought to Miss Erroll. Going up stairs to her own apartments, she passed the school-room and tapped lightly on the door. "A letter for you," she said, courteously, to the governess, not noticing how the woman's hand trembled, when she took it. But the face of Miss Erroll grew ashy pale when, alone with her pupils, she opened and read her letter from Clifford Standish. "To think that she should have this letter in her hands; that she should have brought it to me, it is a mockery of fate! It is like--suicide!" she muttered, through her writhing lips, and a bitter sigh heaved her breast. Geraldine hurried to her own rooms and read Cissy's letter before she removed her wraps, so eager was her fond heart for news from New York. "She will be here to-morrow, to-morrow, the dear girl!" she cried, joyfully, kissing the letter in the exuberance of her gladness. But the letter contained other news that was very puzzling. "Harry followed me to Chicago on the next train, the darling boy! But how strange that he has never come to me! Does he know where I am? Is he in the same city with me?" were questions that repeated themselves over and over in her bewildered brain. She could understand now why he had never answered her letter. Of course, he had never received it, since he was on her trail following her abductor and his victim in their flight from New York.