CHAPTER XXX.MYSTERIES.
Madame Ray looked on at the little by-play with rather puzzled eyes.
For once Cinthia’s pride had enabled her to keep her own confidence. She told her friend nothing of what had passed between her and Arthur Varian, choosing to let her believe that indifference had triumphed over love at last.
Madame Ray simply did not believe it, but she was mystified by the new attitude of the quondam lovers, and she resented in secret Arthur’s reappearance on the scene. She wished eagerly that Cinthia would lose her heart to Fred Foster or some of her other lovers, but she did not believe that there was the least chance of it.
But the more she saw of Arthur Varian the more she was attracted by his true manliness, until her first opinion of him, her preconceived detestation, dissolved into thin air, and she became more and more convinced that not simply a slavish submission to his mother’s will, but some mysterious, impassable barrier, separated him from Cinthia.
She had carried out her intention of questioning old Uncle Rube as to the name of Mrs. Varian’s divorced husband, but he had suddenly pretended an amazing stupidity and loss of memory that was inconceivable, measured by his former sprightliness. On being perniciously pressed by the lady, he admitted that the name, “as well as he couldrecomember, was Brown.”
She did not guess that an interview with Arthur Varian had caused the loss of memory in the old servitor of the Varian family.
“It was money in his pocket to forget the past when questioned by any one,” Arthur cautioned him.
“Brown, Brown—that sounds rather like Dawn,” cogitated Madame Ray; but she could make nothing further of the old negro, and desisted, thinking that after allshe was sure to blunder on the truth at last, being in the neighborhood of the Varians.
Perhaps Arthur felt this also. They were bitter days for him when he felt as if he were walking over a powder mine that might at any moment explode and bring ruin and disaster.
In his earnest way he fathomed Madame Ray’s feelings closely enough to feel her vague suspicions, and he was sorely tempted to confide his trouble to her sympathetic keeping, and beg her to assist him in getting Cinthia happily married. That fact accomplished, nothing else mattered. The whole world was welcome to his sad story.
It was pitiful, his eagerness over Cinthia’s happiness. Madame Ray observed it and marveled, saying to herself:
“He put upon her the greatest insult almost that man can offer woman, deserting her at the very altar; but he is as eager for her happiness as if she belonged to him by the dearest ties. I believe he would give his life freely to save her one pang. Whatisthe mystery? Is there insanity in one family or the other? Or were some ofherrelations hung or in prison, thus making her ineligible for alliance with the noble Varians? I would give the world to know the truth, for Cinthia’s sake.”
She and Arthur became almost unconsciously great friends, for when the cousins came to call together at Lodge Delight, Fred Foster always tacitly appropriatedCinthia, while the hostess was left to Arthur, who never failed to make himself entertaining.
He, too, had his little curiosity over certain things—namely, the connection between the actress and Cinthia.
“Are you related, you two, who are so fond of each other?” he asked her, frankly, one day, when they had been acquainted going on three weeks.
“No, we are not related at all. I suppose it looks like it to you because we are so exceedingly fond of each other,” she replied, with a gentle sigh.
“You surprise me,” he replied, in wonder. “There is so marked a resemblance between you that I do not see how you escaped relationship.”
“It must be your fancy, that is all. My eyes are blue and Cinthia’s dark, my hair is light-brown and hers pure gold. Still, I might have had a dark-eyed daughter, but I lost her in her infancy, and that is one reason why I love Cinthia so—first, because she is so near the age of my lost daughter, and again, because she is so sweet and good—and unhappy,” she replied, pointedly.
Arthur Varian winced, and replied:
“I insist that Cinthia resembles you closely enough to be your own child.”
“Alas, I would that she were!” she cried, with sudden emotion.