CHAPTER XXX.
MYSTERIES.
Madame Ray looked on at the little by-play with rather puzzled eyes.
For once Cinthia’s pride had enabled her to keep her own confidence. She told her friend nothing of what had passed between her and Arthur Varian, choosing to let her believe that indifference had triumphed over love at last.
Madame Ray simply did not believe it, but she was mystified by the new attitude of the quondam lovers, and she resented in secret Arthur’s reappearance on the scene. She wished eagerly that Cinthia would lose her heart to Fred Foster or some of her other lovers, but she did not believe that there was the least chance of it.
But the more she saw of Arthur Varian the more she was attracted by his true manliness, until her first opinion of him, her preconceived detestation, dissolved into thin air, and she became more and more convinced that not simply a slavish submission to his mother’s will, but some mysterious, impassable barrier, separated him from Cinthia.
She had carried out her intention of questioning old Uncle Rube as to the name of Mrs. Varian’s divorced husband, but he had suddenly pretended an amazing stupidity and loss of memory that was inconceivable, measured by his former sprightliness. On being perniciously pressed by the lady, he admitted that the name, “as well as he could recomember, was Brown.”
She did not guess that an interview with Arthur Varian had caused the loss of memory in the old servitor of the Varian family.
“It was money in his pocket to forget the past when questioned by any one,” Arthur cautioned him.
“Brown, Brown—that sounds rather like Dawn,” cogitated Madame Ray; but she could make nothing further of the old negro, and desisted, thinking that after all she was sure to blunder on the truth at last, being in the neighborhood of the Varians.
Perhaps Arthur felt this also. They were bitter days for him when he felt as if he were walking over a powder mine that might at any moment explode and bring ruin and disaster.