“I am glad you could sleep,” Mrs. Varian answered, as she stepped across the threshold and confronted the lovely girl whose heart she was about to wound so cruelly.

But, somehow, she did not shrink from the task for a change had come over her feelings toward Cinthia, and she experienced a sort of fierce pleasure in the task now before her. In a way, it would be taking revenge on a woman who had wronged Mrs. Varian, and who was dead now—dead, but unforgiven in her lonely grave.

For this girl, her daughter, how could Mrs. Varian cherish any love?

Perhaps something like pity touched her heart as the large, soft dark eyes turned upon her so wistfully, but she fought down the sympathy, saying to herself:

“Her mother had no mercy on me—none! And the same blood runs in Cinthia’s veins. She could not be trusted to bring her husband anything but ill.”

She threw back her magnificent head with a haughty motion, and said, curtly:

“Sit down, Cinthia, for what I am about to tell you may possibly ruffle your nerves.”

Cinthia obeyed with surprising meekness for one so proud; but the imperious woman before her had the habit of command, and every one seemed to obey.

She, too, took a chair, as if perhaps her own nerves were not quite steady. Then she said:

“Cinthia, you have done wrong in disobeying your father’s commands, when he told you there were reasons why you should not marry my son.”

Cinthia bowed without answering. She had no defense to make, only the mute protest of her wistful eyes.

“I am here to tell you,” continued Mrs. Varian, “that on my side there exist as grave reasons as your father’s for protesting against your marrying Arthur.”

The blood rose in the girl’s face, mounted to her fair brow, and receded, leaving her pale as death, her eyes beginning to flash with pride. She essayed to speak, and faltered:

“Arthur told me—that you—were pleased—with our engagement. I—I—did not think it mattered much—disobeying a cold, unloving father who has neglected me all my life. If he had been fond of me, kind to me, I would have acted differently.”

A strange gleam shot into the brilliant eyes of Mrs. Varian, almost as if it pleased her to know that Everard Dawn had been cold and cruel to his only daughter. Then she looked down and played with the diamonds that flashed on her white hands, as she continued, gravely:

“Arthur and I have talked matters over together—there are things we would rather not confide to you, best for you not to hear—and we have decided that your father is right. You can never be Arthur’s wife.”

Perhaps Cinthia had expected something like this, but it struck her with the force of a great shock. She began to tremble like a leaf in a gale, crying out:

“You do not mean that he—Arthur—rejects me—after bringing me away from my father’s home to marry me—jilts me at the very altar!”

It was piteous, that heartcry wrung from the profoundest depths of feeling, and for a moment Mrs. Varian was silent, sympathetic. Then she looked down again at her rings, and answered:

“I beg that you will not blame Arthur; he is the soul of honor; but in this matter he has no choice save to give back your promise.”

“He sent you to tell me this? Why was he not brave enough to come himself?”

“He believed it was better not to see you again,” the lady answered; and Cinthia gasped in a sort of terror.

Not to see him again—her Arthur, her love, her king, who was just now to have been her happy bridegroom! Why, this was too terrible to believe! Parted in an hour, torn asunder at the altar by the cruelty of those cold hearts that age and time had taught forgetfulness of love. Why, this was too hard to bear!

It seemed to her that she was swooning, dying; the same sick feeling came to her that she had felt last night, when her father’s voice shouted to them in the blackness of the night; but a sudden hope, a lightning suspicion, restored her fainting senses, and she sat erect again.

“I—I—” she began incoherently. “Oh, Mrs. Varian, it would break my heart to believe the cruel thing you have just said! My Arthur—mine—who was to be my husband—to turn against me all in one moment, to wish never to see me again! You are deceiving me. I will not believe such an impossible story save from his own lips.”

With that passionate defiance she lay back pale and panting, gazing with half-shut eyes at her tormentor.

“Is it so?” said Mrs. Varian. “Then you shall be satisfied. It was only to spare you and Arthur pain. But perhaps it will please you to hear that he suffers as much as you do over this pang of parting.”

There came to her the first intimation of an unsuspected nobility in the girl’s nature when Cinthia uttered, drearily:

“It would be cruel—nay, wicked—in me to wish any one to feel the agony of soul that is my portion.”

“Yet Arthur shares it with you, child, to the deepest, bitterest dregs. Come with me, and see.”

She took Cinthia’s cold, unresisting hand, and led her along the corridor; continuing in an explanatory manner:

“He should have come to you, but the shock of his broken love dream almost stretched him dead at my feet. I had to call in a physician, but he is better now.”

She pushed open a door, and led Cinthia in. She saw Arthur lying on a lounge, with a ghastly face and closed eyes.

“Are you asleep, my son? because, after all, it will be better for you to tell Cinthia yourself. She can not believe me.”

He started and opened his dark-blue eyes. When they fell on the placid sorrowful face of his lost little love, the burning tears sparkled into them and rolled down upon his cheeks. Years of anguish could not have changed him more than this keen stroke of an hour ago.

“Cinthia”—he breathed hollowly, and she came and bent over him, impulsively slipping her little hand into his as he went on—“Cinthia, do not think me false or fickle, or turned against you by the arbitrary wishes of our parents. I never loved you better than in this hour when I must part from you forever. Cinthia, it is the most fortunate thing in the world that my mother chanced on us in time to prevent our mad marriage. A great gulf is fixed between us that neither our love nor our hopes can ever cross. My mother has telegraphed for your father to come and take you home, and we must bid each other an eternal farewell.”

Cinthia felt herself sinking, falling; but an arm slipped round her waist, and Mrs. Varian, with a sigh, pillowed the unconscious head against her breast.