“My suspicions and forebodings are about to be verified. Alas, poor Cinthia!” Arthur Varian drew his arm about his mother, whispering to her of courage in this trying hour, begging her to gratify the sick man’s request. Everard Dawn waited a moment, then added: “You may make the story as short as you please, only let it come from your own lips.” Mrs. Varian lifted her head with something of her old haughty pride, and looked at Cinthia where she drooped against her friend’s breast, but her voice was slightly tremulous as she began: “When I first met your father, Cinthia, he was a rising young lawyer employed by my father to attend to some complicated business matters. Our acquaintance ripened into love, and he became a suitor for my hand against my father’s wishes. But as my lover’s only fault was poverty and we were rich, I soon persuaded papa to withdraw his objections. So we were married.” She paused and sighed, and every one heard Everard Dawn re-echo that sigh heavily. “Go on, dear,” whispered Arthur, encouragingly, with an anxious look at Cinthia. “We were very happy, for my husband seemed a model of manly perfection,” continued Mrs. Varian. “We lived in Florida with my dear father, who made Everard the manager of all his investments, thus insuring him independence of my fortune, for he was very proud and impatient of being thought a fortune-hunter. Arthur was born when I had been married one year, and until he was four years old I was the happiest woman on earth.” Everard Dawn gave her a sudden bright look that she did not perceive, as if grateful for those words. Again sighing, she continued: “Then a dark shadow fell over Love’s Retreat--the shadow of a beautiful young girl, the daughter of a former client of my husband. She arrived suddenly at our home one day, bearing a letter from her father who had recently died. In it he commended the girl--Gladys Lowe--to the guardianship of my husband, begging that he would keep her at his home till she married. To be brief, her father’s property dwindled to nothing when it came to be settled up, leaving her penniless on our hands--a charge I would most generously have undertaken but for the predilection Miss Lowe immediately manifested for my husband, driving me wild with her kittenish coquetries, for she was very charming, with abundant tawny locks and effective hazel eyes, that were always fixed on Everard with a passion she could not disguise. The Varians are charged with being jealous people, and I do not deny it; I feared she would win my husband with her blandishments, and I imperiously demanded of him that he send Miss Lowe away.” CHAPTER XXXIX. A MORTAL WOUND. Every one in the room was listening with suppressed excitement to Mrs. Varian’s story, every eye was fixed on her mortally pale face, so deathlike in its pallor save for the great Oriental dark eyes burning like coals of fire.