A voice that now might well be still.”
Cinthia could not thrust Arthur’s image from her heart however much she tried and longed to do so. She could wear the mask of pride over her sorrow, that was all.
Her father hoped and believed that she was overcoming her trouble, and would have rejoiced as much as Madame Ray if she could have transferred her heart to Frederick Foster. He who had known the pangs of wounded love so well was eager to find a cure for his daughter’s heart.
But all chance of this had been temporarily frustrated by her unexpected rencontre with Arthur Varian.
He felt that all the old ground would have to be gone over now again, and cursed the evil fates that had worked against him.
He regretted that a sudden weariness of foreign shores had decided him to return to America, and made up his mind to take Cinthia away again out of reach of the Varians. This was why he had said that he was going to California.
He had decided to make a home for himself and daughter under those blue and sunny skies, among orange groves and bowers of bloom, where life would glide so softly amid wooing zephyrs, that it would seem like an Arcadia even to disappointed hearts like his own and Cinthia’s. There they would win forgetfulness of the past and hope for the future.
CHAPTER XXV.
“LIKE AN ANGEL.”
Madame Ray guessed not of the intentions of Everard Dawn, or she would have been most unhappy at the thought of parting from Cinthia.
With each day the girl grew dearer to her heart, and it had become her secret fixed intention to make her home near to Cinthia’s, wherever it should be, and never lose sight of her again.