"Not a word about it now," he said, putting his fingers over her lips; "to-morrow the world shall know you as you really are."

"Warren, listen to me," she said, taking his hand. "Until I meet Richmond again, I intend to keep my _incognito_. Perhaps you may call it an odd fancy, but I really wish it. No one yet knows my secret but Mr.

Curtis, Mr. Leonard, and Richmond's brother, and if I wish it they will keep it a secret. Let me still be Miss Randall until he comes."

"But when will he come?" broke in Warren, half impatiently; "who knows?

It may be years or--Georgia," he added, suddenly, "suppose we go to _him_, eh? When the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain--rather that style of thing, isn't it? What do you say to a trip to France, _ma belle_?"

"Oh, Warren!" she cried, catching her breath, her whole face growing radiant with delight.

"I am answered," he said, gayly; "this day week we start."

"For where, may I ask?" said Mr. Curtis, lounging in. "Your chateau in Spain? or on a wild-goose chase?"

"Something very like it," said Warren, laughing. "We are off to France, in search of one Richmond Wildair, plenipotentiary and amba.s.sador extraordinary to the court of that distant and facetious region."

"Whew!" whistled Mr. Curtis, "I see, says the blind man. What a thing conjugal affection is, to be sure! When do you go?"

"This day week, in the Golden Arrow. And for some inscrutable feminine reason Georgia wishes you to preserve her secret inviolable until she returns. She is still Miss Randall; you understand? You and Mr. Leonard are not to mention she is Richmond Wildair's runaway wife."

"I'm dumb," said Mr. Curtis, shutting his lips as firmly as though they were never to be opened on earth again. "Neither tortures, nor anguish, nor bad pale ale shall tear from this lacerated heart the fearful secret. Are you going to see after that prize of yours to-morrow, Mrs.

Wild--gee Whittaker! I mean Miss Randall," said he, dropping his tone of stage agony, and speaking in his natural voice.

"Most decidedly," said Georgia, smiling.

"And then you are going to throw yourself away on our painfully clever friend Wildair again, and leave all your friends here in Gotham to pine away, with tears in their eyes and their fingers in their mouths," said Mr. Curtis, in a lugubrious tone; "it's something I never expected of you, Mrs. Wil--pooh! I mean Miss Randall, and I must say I, for one, never deserved it."

"Mr. Curtis, you--you were in Burnfield since I was," said Georgia, hesitatingly, and coloring deeply; "how was Miss Jerusha and Emily Murray?"

"Well they were both in a state of mind--rather," said Mr. Curtis. "Miss Jerusha flamed up, and blew us all, sky high, in fact raised the ancient Harry, in a way quite appalling to a person of tender nerves--myself, for instance--and gave Richmond what may be called, without exaggeration, particular fits! As for little Emily," said Mr. Curtis, turning red suddenly, "she--she didn't scold anybody, but she cried and took on so that I felt--I felt a sort of all-over as it were--a very peculiar feeling, to use a mild phrase, if you observe."

"Dear little Emily," said Georgia, sighing.

"That's just what I said," said Mr. Curtis, eagerly "but she didn't pay any attention to it. I suppose you know I--I went--I mean I asked--that is I offered--pshaw! what d'ye call it--proposed," said Mr. Curtis, blushing, and squirming uneasily in his chair.

"No, I did not know it," said Georgia, with difficulty repressing a smile.

"But I did though, and she refused me--she did, by Jove!" said Mr.

Curtis, dolorously.

"What bad taste the girl must have," said Mr. Randall.

"You're another," said Mr. Curtis, fiercely; "she's no such thing! How dare you insinuate such a thing, Mr. Randall? There never yet was born a man good enough for her; and if you dare to doubt it, I'll be hanged if I don't knock you into the middle of next week--now then!"

Mr. Curtis was as fierce as a Bengal tiger. Mr. Randall threw himself into a chair, and laughed immoderately.

"My dear fellow, I cry you mercy, and most humbly beg Miss Emily Murray's pardon. I look forward some day to being acquainted with her myself, and if I find her all that you say, I shall consider the advisability of making her Mrs. Warren Randall."

"You be--shot!" growled Mr. Curtis, striding savagely up and down.

"She's not to be had for the asking, I can tell you; and after refusing _me_, it's not likely she'd have anything to do with you. Mrs.

Wildair--oh, darn it!--Miss Randall, I mean, when you see your husband, tell him his mother is very ill, and if he does not hasten home soon he will not see her alive. A precious small loss that would be though,"

said Mr. Curtis, in parenthesis--"a stiff, sneering, high-and-mighty old virago! Don't see, for my part, what Rich meant by ever having such a mother!"

One week later, Warren Randall and his sister were on board the Golden Arrow, _en route_ for Merrie England. Fair breezes soon wafted them to the white cliffs of that "right little, tight little" island, and Georgia for the first time set foot on a foreign sh.o.r.e.

But now, in her impatience to rejoin and be reconciled to her husband, she would consent to make no stay; so they immediately crossed the channel into France, and posted at once for Paris. And there the first news they heard from the American consul was that Mr. Wildair had left a fortnight before for St. Petersburg.

It was a disappointment to both, a bitter one to Georgia, and Warren felt it for her sake. To follow him was the first impulse of both, and they immediately started for the Russian capital.

But fortune still inclined to be capricious, and to doom Georgia's new-found patience to another trial. Mr. Wildair's political mission required dispatch, and a few days before their arrival he had gone. From the minister they learned that his first destination was a return to Paris, from thence to Baden Baden, and it was more than probable he would visit London and then return home.

"Well, Georgia," said Warren, "you see fate is against you, and has doomed you to disappointment. Nothing remains now but to make the best of a bad bargain and start on a regular sight-seeing tour, and 'do'

Europe, as Curtis would call it. And, after all, perhaps it is for the best you did not meet him. He is now rapidly rising to political distinction, and his meeting with you might distract his thoughts, and would certainly keep him from entering heart and soul into the political arena as he does now. Besides, having lost you for so long, he will know how to value you all the more when you do return. Come, Georgia, what difference, after all, will a year or two make in a life? Don't think of returning now, but let us continue our tour."

"I am at your disposal, my dear Warren," said Georgia, with a smile and a sigh. "As you say, after all, a year more or less will not make a great deal of difference, and I am particularly anxious to continue our tour. Therefore, _mon frere_, do with me as you will."

With an account of that tour, dearest reader, I will not weary your patience--already, I fear, too much taxed. All "grand tours" are alike--the same sights are seen, the same incidents occur, the same scenery and pictures are looked at and gone into raptures over, and the same people are met everywhere. The summer was spent traveling slowly through France and Germany, and the winter was pa.s.sed in Italy. Early in the spring they visited Switzerland; and, almost imperceptibly, two years pa.s.sed away.

And where, meanwhile, was he whose willful blindness and haughty pride had brought on his own desolation? Where was he, widowed in fate though not in fact?--where was Richmond Wildair?

Home again, drowning thought and his intolerable remorse in the giddy whirl of political life. He had returned in time to close his mother's eyes, and hear her last words--a wild appeal for Georgia, the wronged Georgia, to forgive her. And then, with all the power of his mighty intellect, he had given himself up to the life he had chosen, that life for which Heaven and nature had so well qualified him--a great legislator--and that life became to him wife, and home, and all. Already he had taken his seat in the Senate, and, though perhaps the youngest there, stood foremost among them all, crowned with his lofty genius as with a diadem. The knowing ones whispered that at the next election he was certain of becoming Governor of his native State, and certainly, as far as popularity went, there could be little doubt of it. Never was there a young statesman, perhaps, who in so short a time had risen so rapidly to distinction, and won such "golden opinions" from all sorts of people.

Of almost all concerning his wife he was profoundly ignorant. One thing he knew, and that was that she, and no other, had painted the wonderful picture about which the artistic world was still raving. Hagar, in her mighty grief and dark despair, the wild, woeful, anguished form writhing yet majestic in her great wrongs, was Georgia as he had seen her last.

And, as if to make conviction doubly sure, the picture bore her initials. One consolation it brought to him, and that was that she still lived. Every effort in human power he had made to discover her, but all he could succeed in learning was that a tall, dark, majestic-looking lady, bearing the name of Miss Randall, had received the prize; but nothing more was known of her. Then he sought for her brother, and heard he had gone to Europe, but whether alone or not he could not discover. A score of times within the day would d.i.c.k Curtis be on the point of telling him all, until the recollection of his promise would stop him, and he would inwardly fume at not having made a mental reservation at the time. Still, these tortures of doubt, and uncertainty, and hope, and despair served Richmond just exactly right, he argued, and would teach him, if he ever did find Georgia, to treat her better for the future.

And so, while Georgia was roaming over the world, Richmond was rising to still higher fame and eminence in his native land; and neither dreamed how each had searched, and sought, and sorrowed in vain for the other.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AT LAST!

"And there was light around her brow, A holiness in those dark eyes, Which showed, though wandering earthward now, Her spirit's home was in the skies."

Two years had pa.s.sed and gone.

It was drawing toward sunset of a clear, bright, breezy day, when a crowd of people "might have been seen," and were seen, too, hurrying down to one of the wharves of B----, to watch the arrival of the steamer from Europe. Throngs of people who had friends on board came trooping down, and watched with eager eyes the stately vessel as it smoked and puffed its way, like an apoplectic alderman, to the sh.o.r.e.

Among these lounged a young man, good-looking and fashionably dressed, and evidently got up regardless of expense. There was a certain air of self-complacency about him, as he stroked a pair of most desirable curling whiskers, that said, as plainly as words, he was "somebody," and knew it. Another young republican, puffing a cigar, stood beside him, and both were watching, with the careless nonchalance of sovereigns in their own right, the throng of foreigners that stood on the steamer's deck.

"A crowd there--rather!" remarked the hero of the cigar, as he fastidiously held it between his finger and thumb and knocked the ashes off the end. "Our European brethren have arrived in time to see the elephant to good advantage. Young America will be out in great force to-night."

"To cheer the new governor--ye-es," drawled the other, as he, too, lighted a cigar, and began smoking like a living Vesuvius.