CHAPTER XIX.A TRAGIC PAST.
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. Atdusk 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 thematinée,” 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 twoit 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.”