“I wonder if it would be painful. I don’t want to suffer,” she said to herself, with keen physical shrinking, while her active mind pictured the scene when they should come to seek her and find her cold and dead—her cruel father, fickle Arthur, and his revengeful mother, who, for the sake of an old-time wrong, was willing to break two fond young hearts.
What keen remorse would pierce their hearts when they saw that they had driven her to desperation and death! Perhaps they would repent when it was all too late. At the moving thought, Cinthia dissolved into floods of tears.
She knelt down by a chair, with her head on her arm, and heavy sobs shook her slight frame like a reed in the wind.
She cried out that she wished she had never seen Arthur Varian, who had taught her the sweet meaning of love only to make her more lonely and wretched than she had been before.
But a rap on the door made her start up in alarm and hastily dash away her tears before she opened it to a white-clad waiter bearing a tray containing a dainty breakfast, which he arranged on a little table, then withdrew.
Then Cinthia, in spite of her grief, discovered that she was unromantically hungry.
On yesterday, while sulking in her chamber at home she had refused food all day, and on the train last night had only taken some fruit.
The appetizing aroma of hot rolls, broiled birds, and steaming chocolate began to appeal to her irresistibly, and she ended by drawing up a chair and making a tolerable meal for a girl who thought her heart was broken and was actually contemplating suicide.
She did not feel half so morbid when she finished her chocolate. Life was bitter still, but death did not seem so desirable.
Her first temptation to suicide changed to a thought of flight.