It would have startled Frederick Foster, who hovered near her with eager attentions, to find how little part he had in her thoughts and dreams, for a faint trembling hope had come to her heart that perhaps the death of her father might have some effect on her relations with Arthur, might possibly restore them to happiness.
Arthur, meanwhile, knowing the futility of all hope in Cinthia’s direction, gave himself up to unrestrained melancholy, in which blended considerable curiosity as to how it happened that his mother and Mr. Dawn had been together at Charlottesville.
Everard Dawn, who had an aversion to letter-writing, corresponded but infrequently with his daughter, hence had left her in ignorance of the date of his return from California.
Mrs. Varian, on the other hand, had not apprised her son of her suddenly decided upon journey to Florida.
So he could only nurse his wonder and melancholy together while looking back in a painful retrospection over the tangled web of what had been and what might have been, those “saddest of all sad words.”
There was a silent prayer in his heart, too, that Everard Dawn might survive till he reached his bedside, so that some last words might be said between them, some news be told, and perhaps some death-bed revelations be made to Cinthia.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AN OBSTINATE WOMAN.
Janetta, the indiscreet maid, would never forget the night when she blurted out the news of the railway wreck to her ailing mistress and sent her into that long, deathly swoon.
Mrs. Varian was not in the habit of fainting, and it gave Janetta a terrible scare, especially when the usual simple remedies failed to revive the unconscious lady.
Pale as a marble figure, her pallor heightened by the loosened tresses of raven hair and the inky lashes lying heavily against her cheek, she lay among the pillows, and though Janetta tried frantically first one thing and then another, no breath stirred the pulseless bosom of her mistress.