The beautiful stranger pushed Cinthia gently into a chair, and sat down by her side.
“I hope you will not think me intruding, my dear girl; but you inspire me with a strange interest. Are you here alone?” she cried, earnestly.
“Alone!” answered Cinthia in a tragic tone, as she lifted her anguished dark eyes and scanned the other’s face.
She beheld one of the sweetest, fairest faces she had ever beheld.
The lady might have been thirty-five or more, but she possessed that charm of beauty that always suggests youth—perfect features, a complexion fresh as the morning; large, tender eyes of the brightest blue, and abundant tresses of shining golden brown hair, while a mouth like Cupid’s bow in form, and crimson as a rose, revealed in a dazzling smile small pearly white teeth, that added the last charm to her winsome loveliness.
Cinthia gazed fixedly at that winning face, drew a long breath of emotion, and instantly became captive to beauty’s bow and spear.
She was irresistibly drawn to the graceful woman whose sweet, silvery voice sounded like music in her ears as she exclaimed:
“You are in trouble, dear; I feel it, see it in your pale face and sad eyes. I hear it in the anguish of your voice. And you are alone, you say! Then I dare not go away and leave you like this, lest harm befall you. Let me help you!”
“No one can help me,” Cinthia answered in stubborn despair; but all the while that voice and smile were thrilling her heart with subtle tenderness.
“Then the case must indeed be serious,” cried the lady, gently slipping her arm around Cinthia’s waist, moved by an impulse she scarcely understood herself; while she continued, gently: