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Updated: June 16, 2025
"You say that you know Hubert Varrick well, yet you do not appear conversant with his history. He married this young girl sitting beside you, who was then Miss Gerelda Northrup. On their wedding journey the steamer 'St. Lawrence' was lost, and she was supposed by all her friends to have perished in the frightful accident."
He made up his mind that he could not marry Gerelda while his heart was so entirely another's, but he must break away from her gently. As he was passing a music store the next afternoon, he saw a piece of music in the window which Gerelda had asked him to bring to her.
Surely, there is no lingering doubt in his heart now, that you eloped!" Gerelda eagerly seized upon this idea. "There seems to be, mother," she sobbed. Mrs. Northrup drew a cushioned chair close beside her daughter, and drew the dark, curly head into her arms. "You must make a confidante of me, my darling, and tell me all he said," she declared.
I may as well make a clean breast of the whole matter," he went on, "and tell you the truth, Gerelda. I do not love you. I I love another, though that love has never been confessed to the one I love. I I married you because I felt in honor bound to do so, and in doing so I crushed all the love that was budding in my heart. But was it worth the sacrifice of two lives? You can not answer me.
He had loved Gerelda Northrup as few men love in a life-time, but with the belief that she had eloped with another, growing up in his heart, he had been able to stifle that love, root it from his heart, blossom and branch, with an iron will, until at last he knew if he came face to face with Gerelda she would never again have the power to thrill his heart with the same passion.
No one knew how it had happened; there seemed to be no one left to tell the tale. When Captain Frazier returned that evening and found the place in ruins, he was almost wild with grief. In his own mind he felt that he knew how it had come about. In her desperation to get away, Gerelda had fired the house.
There was an expression in her eyes not good to see, and which Captain Frazier knew boded no good to the object of her wrath. At this juncture the express rolled into the Boston depot. Bidding Rosamond Lee and Captain Frazier a hasty good-bye, and insisting that under no circumstances should they accompany her, Gerelda hailed a cab, and gave the order: "To the Varrick mansion."
Why did you draw me on to love you so? You encouraged me up to the last moment, and then it was too late for me to give you up." Gerelda Northrup neither spoke nor stirred. "You drew me on ay, up to the very last moment or this would never have happened.
It occurred to him how strangely like a woman the dark shadow looked. And as he gazed, lo! it moved, and to his utmost amazement, advanced slowly toward him. For an instant all his powers seemed to leave him. "Gerelda, by all that's merciful," he cried. "Yes, it is I, Gerelda!" she cried, hoarsely, confronting him. "I have come back from the grave to claim you!"
Great preparations had been made in the hotel for the approaching marriage. The spacious private parlors to be used were perfect fairy bowers of roses and green leaves. Up to this very morning Miss Northrup's imported wedding-gown had not arrived. Mrs. Northrup and Hubert Varrick were wild with anxiety and impatience over the affair. Gerelda alone took the matter calmly.
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