Her love for the fair young girl was a passion of devotion. She would have sacrificed all she possessed to secure her happiness.
Yet Cinthia seemed further away than ever from it now.
“Ah, my darling, you should not brood so morbidly over the past!” she cried, winding her arms around the fair girl’s waist. “You have lost a lover, it is true; but think how much more I have suffered, when scarcely as old as you, losing a beloved husband and darling infant.”
“You have lost a child? Dear heart, how I pity you!” Cinthia cried, tenderly.
“Yes, Cinthia, I have lost a little daughter, who would be as old as you are. It is for her sake I love you so dearly, because you are motherless, and I, alas! childless. It is a sad story, and some day I will tell it to you. Then you will see that my sorrow is greater than yours,” sighed the lovely actress.
Cinthia pressed her hand, and murmured:
“You had their love till they died, and in heaven they are waiting to welcome you home, still your own, still fond and true. But he I loved proved false, and another may win him from me. Were it not better if he had really died and belonged to me truly in heaven?”
Oh, how sad the pathetic voice, how mournful the far-off gaze, piercing the listener’s heart like an arrow!
She cried out, bitterly:
“Ah, Cinthia, you know not the depth of my bereavement. My husband is dead, it is true. I had his love but a little while, but it was bliss while it was mine, and I know it is waiting for me in heaven, but oh, Cinthia, my little one, my baby—oh! oh! oh!” and she dissolved in a passion of tears that startled Cinthia from her own morbid grief and turned her to the task of the consoler.