A low moan came from her blanched lips and Arthur Varian left his mother’s side and approached her with leaden-weighted feet and a look as of death’s agony in his fixed blue eyes. He took her hand, and said, hollowly: “Cinthia, you understand it all now, but you will not mind it, I know, because Fred is going to make you very happy, my dear little _sister_.” No one in that room ever forgot the white agony of Cinthia Dawn’s face as she sprung to her feet, with outstretched arms, quivering all over as if a bullet had pierced her heart, pushing Arthur away as if his hand had given the mortal wound. “Oh, God, let me die!” she shrieked, in her despair, and sunk senseless in Madame Ray’s arms. CHAPTER XL. A LATE REPENTANCE. Doctor Deane feared that all that excitement must hurt his patient very much, so he cleared the room as soon as possible, letting no one stay but Mrs. Flint and himself. She, poor old lady, was terribly shocked at hearing the full story of her brother’s life, having only known a few hazy details before. But she pulled herself together the best she could, and hung tenderly over the bedside, chafing her brother’s cold hands, and murmuring: “Poor Everard! how cruelly you have been wronged, and how sad your life has been! If I had known all the truth, I could never have blamed you for neglecting Cinthy, though it is a pity, for a sweeter girl never lived, I am sure. She can not have inherited her disposition from her wicked mother.” He looked at her kindly, but he was too exhausted by all he had endured to answer, but lay, pale and gasping, among the pillows, while the doctor busied himself with restoratives. “All this excitement has been very bad for him, and he must have quiet and sleep the rest of the day,” he said uneasily, before he went out to see after his other patients. They had carried Cinthia to her own room, where Madame Ray hung over her with tearful devotion excluding every one else, even her anxious betrothed, who hung about in most disconsolate fashion. Janetta returned to her watch by Rachel Dane, and Arthur accompanied his mother to her own apartments, mastering his own agitation in his tenderness for her trouble. “You will lie down and rest, dear mother, or you will be ill after this fatiguing ordeal,” he pleaded. She was pacing restlessly up and down the floor, a picture of nervous suffering painful to gaze upon. Pausing in the center of the room, her white, jeweled fingers locked together as if in pain, she looked at him with burning eyes, crying wildly: “Oh, Arthur, how can I rest, how can I sleep? _He_ is dying, and I--I am full of doubt and terror! Awakened conscience daunts me. Have I wronged him or not? Is he innocent, or is he guilty?” “Mother you heard him swear to his innocence by all his hopes of heaven!”