The actress did not urge her any further. Taking her hand as fondly as
if she had been her own daughter, she led her from the room, down to
her waiting carriage. At dusk that evening she had not returned, and
when Everard Dawn went to seek her, in company with Mrs. Varian, they
found the room untenanted.
Mr. Dawn had come out of Arthur’s room with a pale, agitated face,
and a look about the eyes that in a woman would have betokened recent
tears. It had, in fact, been a most emotional interview, and one from
which he was glad to escape.
But the softness of his expression gave place to pride and coldness
when he saw Mrs. Varian waiting for him, and he said, with a
haughtiness that equaled her own:
“Will you have the kindness to conduct me to Cinthia?”
She wondered why he did not say “my daughter,” instead of Cinthia; but
it pleased her, nevertheless, the indifference he showed toward his
child. She was selfish enough to feel glad that he had no love for the
daughter of the woman who had been her enemy in life, and whose sin
against her had been too heinous for any possibility of forgiveness.
With a slight bow of assent she moved on by his side to Cinthia’s room,
where she knocked several times without receiving any answer.
With a sudden misgiving at the memory of the girl’s desperate mood that
morning, she opened the door and looked inside.
“Good heavens, she is gone!” turning to him with startled eyes.
He answered sternly, rebukingly:
“She should not have been left alone. But, of course, I could not
expect you to watch over her mother’s daughter.”
Her great eyes flashed in her pale face as she retorted:
“I certainly had no cause to love her, but I would not wish her any
ill. We had better inquire about her down at the office.”
They did so, and were startled and mystified by the news that Madame
Ray, the actress, had called on Miss Dawn that morning, and soon
afterward took her away with her in the carriage.
“The lady is playing at the Metropolitan Theater. Perhaps the young
lady has gone to the _matinée_,” said the polite clerk, wondering at
their blank faces.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Mr. Dawn returned, unwilling to make his
perturbation known. He turned away with Mrs. Varian, saying to her in
an undertone: “I will go in search of her, and--you had better keep
this news from Arthur.”
“I will,” she answered; and he left her with a slight, cold bow.
She stood still in the corridor and watched him out of sight with a
stony gaze ere she retreated to her own room and sunk half fainting
upon a chair, murmuring:
“Ah! cruel fate that made him cross my path again! Was I not wretched
enough already?”
Whatever there had been in the past between those two it had surely
been most tragic, judging by their present scorn of each other, and
their impatience of the fate that had brought them together again.
For more than an hour she crouched in her chair with drooping head
and a gray, ashen face, from which her great burning eyes shone like
live coals; then she rose and stared at herself in the long mirror,
muttering, bleakly:
“What a wreck I look after one of those spells, wan and gray, like
a woman aged in an hour. It would frighten Arthur to see me like
this, and he would surely guess at the hidden fires that slumber,
volcano-like, in my breast, eating away love and hope and joy. He must
not see me thus;” and with the aid of cosmetics, skillfully applied,
she soon hid the traces of the passion-storm that had swept with
devastating force over her soul. Then swallowing a light draught of
wine, she sought her son.
He lay quiescent upon the couch, as he had lain all day, after his
illness of the morning, with his white hand before his eyes. There had
been a most exciting interview between him and Mr. Dawn, and he was now
temporarily utterly worn out and exhausted.
The unhappy mother sat down by her son and ran her slender fingers
caressingly through the soft clustering locks of his abundant hair.
She saw his pale face writhe with a spasm of inward feeling, as he
muttered through trembling lips:
“Are they gone?”
She answered, evasively:
“Yes.”