It did not occur to her to ask the name of the relative who had left her so handsome a legacy, or to notice that her father had not spoken of any one’s death. In her eagerness she accepted her good fortune without curiosity, and clasping her little hands in growing excitement, cried:
“Papa, I have always wished to cross the sea. Will you take me?”
“Yes, Cinthia; but should you not see something of your own land first?”
“That can wait, papa. My first wish is to put the whole breadth of the world between me and Arthur Varian.”
“Perhaps that will be best,” he assented; for her words touched an aching chord in his own heart.
Who could know better the aching pangs of love and loss than Everard Dawn, who had tasted both to the bitter dregs?
And how could he blame any one for the mad instinct of flight from memory when he had been a restless exile weary years for no better reason?
“And I have wandered far away to quell my spirit’s wild unrest,
From place to place a lonely one,
And rocked on ocean’s heaving breast.