“Of course I would not permit Cinthia to go alone to so sad a scene as her father’s death-bed, poor dear!” she said, with warm sympathy.
Cinthia was shocked and grieved at the news of Everard Dawn’s accident and impending death, but her grief lacked the depth of a filial bereavement. Owing to her strong resentment at his own coldness, the girl had never felt the sentiment of love for him. If Madame Ray had died she would have been inconsolable, but in the case of her father she felt quite differently.
She was shocked and pained, but she would have felt almost as deeply over any well-known friend who had met with such an accident. His death would not mean any serious affliction to her. Indeed, when the first shock was over, she remembered that perhaps now she would never have to leave dear Madame Ray for another home. True, in a moment of madness and resentment at Arthur’s coldness, she had rashly consented to marry his cousin, but she was not at all certain that she would keep her promise.
She had told him frankly that she admired and esteemed him, but had no love to give. If he was willing to wait, to give her time to cultivate a warmer feeling, she would try her best to learn, and on these terms he based their betrothal. To Cinthia herself it seemed as if she must surely grow fond of him in time, he was so handsome, so splendid, so devoted. She argued to herself that in time her love for Arthur must surely be overcome by her contempt for his weakness and cowardice that had brought sorrow into both their lives.
Yet, as she watched his pale and sorrowful face while the train sped on its way, she felt a rush of painful tenderness flooding her heart, while she wondered why he was taking so much to heart the trouble that had fallen on herself. Everard Dawn was nothing to him—nothing except a man he had cause to dislike, because he had prevented his marriage to his daughter—yet his pallor, his sadness, his preoccupation were effects that might have been produced by the death of a near relative.
Cinthia, drooping in her seat, with a thick veil drawn over her pallid face, could not keep her eyes from her old lover, could not repress the rush of tenderness that made her heart ache.
She would have liked—she, the promised bride of Frederick Foster—to have thrown her arms about Arthur Varian’s neck, pressed her pale cheek to his, and whispered in the passion of her womanly love:
“Why are you so pale, so sad, my best beloved? Is it for me? Has Frederick told you that I have promised to marry him, and are you grieved? Perhaps the old love is not dead yet in your heart, perhaps it cries for me in the dead of night as my heart for you. Oh, is it too late to go back, to thrust aside everything but the imperious demands of our love, and be happy yet?”
A sudden wild thought yet came to her and made her heart leap:
“Only let me find my father yet alive, and he shall explain the mystery of his opposition to my marriage with Arthur. She, too, is there, Arthur’s mother, who for the sake of her hatred of my father and mother was willing to wreck our happiness forever. Who knows but that when both are dead, both my mother and father, her cruel revenge may be satiated so that she may be willing to let love have its way.”