“A good idea, Arthur,” and suiting the action to the word, they presented two broad backs toward the new-comers, who had barely stepped across the threshold ere they recoiled, each with a stifled cry of surprise.
The Mother Eve that is in all men just as much as in all women made the two smokers spring up and look around at the intruders.
Then there were more startled exclamations all around.
For the fate that seemed to pursue Cinthia Dawn with its cruelest irony had followed her even here.
She had fled from the far North to the far South to escape Arthur Varian, and she had hoped never to gaze again in life on his too fatally fascinating beauty—the manly beauty that had lured the girlish heart from her breast only to toss it back to her at the command of cruel parents, who seemed to have forgotten the fervor of youthful love, or they never could have been so harsh to their tortured children.
Yet, here stood Arthur Varian before her again—Arthur Varian pale to the very lips, Arthur Varian with unmasked despair in his beautiful, dark-blue eyes.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ONLY FRIENDS.
“I ask no pledge to make me blest
In gazing when alone,
Nor one memorial for a breast