He regretted that a sudden weariness of foreign shores had decided him to return to America, and made up his mind to take Cinthia away again out of reach of the Varians. This was why he had said that he was going to California. He had decided to make a home for himself and daughter under those blue and sunny skies, among orange groves and bowers of bloom, where life would glide so softly amid wooing zephyrs, that it would seem like an Arcadia even to disappointed hearts like his own and Cinthia’s. There they would win forgetfulness of the past and hope for the future. CHAPTER XXV. “LIKE AN ANGEL.” Madame Ray guessed not of the intentions of Everard Dawn, or she would have been most unhappy at the thought of parting from Cinthia. With each day the girl grew dearer to her heart, and it had become her secret fixed intention to make her home near to Cinthia’s, wherever it should be, and never lose sight of her again. Her love for the fair young girl was a passion of devotion. She would have sacrificed all she possessed to secure her happiness. Yet Cinthia seemed further away than ever from it now. “Ah, my darling, you should not brood so morbidly over the past!” she cried, winding her arms around the fair girl’s waist. “You have lost a lover, it is true; but think how much more I have suffered, when scarcely as old as you, losing a beloved husband and darling infant.” “You have lost a child? Dear heart, how I pity you!” Cinthia cried, tenderly. “Yes, Cinthia, I have lost a little daughter, who would be as old as you are. It is for her sake I love you so dearly, because you are motherless, and I, alas! childless. It is a sad story, and some day I will tell it to you. Then you will see that my sorrow is greater than yours,” sighed the lovely actress. Cinthia pressed her hand, and murmured: “You had their love till they died, and in heaven they are waiting to welcome you home, still your own, still fond and true. But he I loved proved false, and another may win him from me. Were it not better if he had really died and belonged to me truly in heaven?” Oh, how sad the pathetic voice, how mournful the far-off gaze, piercing the listener’s heart like an arrow! She cried out, bitterly: “Ah, Cinthia, you know not the depth of my bereavement. My husband is dead, it is true. I had his love but a little while, but it was bliss while it was mine, and I know it is waiting for me in heaven, but oh, Cinthia, my little one, my baby--oh! oh! oh!” and she dissolved in a passion of tears that startled Cinthia from her own morbid grief and turned her to the task of the consoler. Most gently, most fondly, most lovingly she caressed the agitated mourner, murmuring to her of the beautiful home, not made with hands, where her dead child was a precious angel.