“What if I should slip away and hide myself in the great world, where they could never find me again? I might make a career for myself, become a great actress, maybe, and when they saw me successful on the stage, they would think I had forgotten cruel Arthur, as I wish them to do, for I would not have him think I love him still,” she thought, bitterly, her mind running on novels she had read in which romantic girls, thrown alone on the world, had encountered wonderful adventures, and finally carved their names on the rock of [love.]
Cinthia was utterly wretched and despairing, and in the mood for anything reckless.
She flung on her hat and jacket, and turned toward the door.
She was actually going to venture out into the world alone, a desperate victim whom fate had used most cruelly, and who longed to escape from everything she had known into some new, untried sphere.
She had no idea where she was going. She would escape into the street, and wander aimlessly up and down with the busy throngs; that was just now her only thought.
She stretched out her hand to the door-knob, and at the instant a light rap on the outside startled her.
“It is Mrs. Varian; but she cannot forbid my going,” she thought, defiantly, and flung wide the door.
A stranger stood on the threshold—a lovely woman richly dressed, faint, delicate perfume exhaling from her silks and furs.
“Ah, you are going out? I beg pardon; but will you permit me to enter your room for a moment? I have lately occupied it—in fact, only went away this morning—and I have discovered that I forgot two of my rings,” she exclaimed in a sweet, silvery voice like liquid music.
Cinthia stood aside to let her enter; and, floating to the dressing-case, she lifted the scarf and displayed two sparkling rings.