“Shall we return to the hotel? Or would you like to go on to New York to-night to get ready for sailing on the first steamer?”
“We will go to New York to-night, but first let me go and say farewell to my dear friend Madame Ray,” she said, hurrying to the greenroom.
Everard Dawn went out and sent a note to Mrs. Varian, while he waited for his daughter.
It ran simply:
“I found Cinthia at the theater, and we go on at once to New York, to sail this week for Europe, by her earnestly expressed wish. In change of scene and the rush of excitement she will seek oblivion of this painful episode in her life.
“E. D.”
Presently Cinthia came to him from Madame Ray’s dressing-room, where she had spent a long half hour, and her father saw that the dew of tears hung heavily on the thick fringe of her dark lashes. Wondering greatly at this mysterious friendship, he drew her hand through his arm and led her away to the new life that lay before her in the untried future.
CHAPTER XXI.
A QUARREL WITH FATE.
Mrs. Flint would have been very lonely after her brother’s departure, but for the fact that she had her hands and her mind both full with helping the nurse to care for the poor wayfarer so strangely thrown on her hands.
As it was, her anxiety over Cinthia was soon dissipated by the receipt of a telegram from Mr. Dawn, announcing that he had found his daughter safe in Washington, and that they would go on a trip to New York.