The lady might have been thirty-five or more, but she possessed that charm of beauty that always suggests youth--perfect features, a complexion fresh as the morning; large, tender eyes of the brightest blue, and abundant tresses of shining golden brown hair, while a mouth like Cupid’s bow in form, and crimson as a rose, revealed in a dazzling smile small pearly white teeth, that added the last charm to her winsome loveliness. Cinthia gazed fixedly at that winning face, drew a long breath of emotion, and instantly became captive to beauty’s bow and spear. She was irresistibly drawn to the graceful woman whose sweet, silvery voice sounded like music in her ears as she exclaimed: “You are in trouble, dear; I feel it, see it in your pale face and sad eyes. I hear it in the anguish of your voice. And you are alone, you say! Then I dare not go away and leave you like this, lest harm befall you. Let me help you!” “No one can help me,” Cinthia answered in stubborn despair; but all the while that voice and smile were thrilling her heart with subtle tenderness. “Then the case must indeed be serious,” cried the lady, gently slipping her arm around Cinthia’s waist, moved by an impulse she scarcely understood herself; while she continued, gently: “My heart aches for your sorrow, dear, and although we are strangers to each other, I long to comfort you. Confide in me, and perhaps I can help you. Is it a question of lack of means? Or, sadder still, of--love?” “Of love!” burst out Cinthia; and she dropped her head on that silken shoulder in a passionate outburst of tears, won in spite of herself by the divine art of sympathy. And then, since both were strangely, magnetically attracted to each other, it was not hard for her to draw from Cinthia the brief, sad story of her life and love down to the very moment when she had opened the door to fly out into the street with the half-formed plan of suicide yet in her mind. Oh, what a pathetic, moving story it was! And how it touched the listener’s tender heart, moving her to tears! She could sympathize with all that Cinthia told her, and could share in her resentment against her unloving father, her strict aunt, and the lover whose affection had not been proof against the schemes of his proud mother. To her eyes, as to Cinthia’s, it all looked as if Mrs. Varian and Everard Dawn had made of the hapless lovers a sacrifice to a family feud vaguely hinted at in the lady’s confession to Cinthia, that her mother had been her bitterest enemy and was unforgiven in her grave. With all her heart she espoused Cinthia’s side, and freely expressed contempt for Arthur’s part in the girl’s sorrow. “He has acted the part of a coward, forsaking you thus at the command of his haughty mother, and I would think no more of him, dear, for he is not worth it,” she exclaimed, warmly. Cinthia only sighed. She did not believe now that she could ever put Arthur out of her thoughts.