“Sight-seers whom we do not know, I suppose, so let us hide in here and finish our talk and our cigars till they leave. I care no more for womankind, be she never so fair, since I have lost the lovely queen of my heart,” one said to the other; so they fled the scene till it should be safe to venture out. He was dark and striking in appearance, the other was fairer and younger than his companion by several years. His clustering locks were light golden brown, and the beauty of his face was enhanced by the expressive dark-blue eyes, where shadows of secret sorrow seemed to lurk in half-discovered ambush. “Fred they are coming this way by their voices. Let us turn our backs to the door, so that they will see we are not anxious to be disturbed,” he said, presently. “A good idea, Arthur,” and suiting the action to the word, they presented two broad backs toward the new-comers, who had barely stepped across the threshold ere they recoiled, each with a stifled cry of surprise. The Mother Eve that is in all men just as much as in all women made the two smokers spring up and look around at the intruders. Then there were more startled exclamations all around. For the fate that seemed to pursue Cinthia Dawn with its cruelest irony had followed her even here. She had fled from the far North to the far South to escape Arthur Varian, and she had hoped never to gaze again in life on his too fatally fascinating beauty--the manly beauty that had lured the girlish heart from her breast only to toss it back to her at the command of cruel parents, who seemed to have forgotten the fervor of youthful love, or they never could have been so harsh to their tortured children. Yet, here stood Arthur Varian before her again--Arthur Varian pale to the very lips, Arthur Varian with unmasked despair in his beautiful, dark-blue eyes. CHAPTER XXVIII. ONLY FRIENDS. “I ask no pledge to make me blest In gazing when alone, Nor one memorial for a breast Whose thoughts are all thine own. “By day or night, in weal or woe, That heart no longer free Must bear the love it can not show And silent ache for thee.” But whatever cruel pain this unexpected meeting produced on Arthur and Cinthia, its effect on Frederick Foster was wholly joyful. He could scarcely believe his own joyful sight when he saw Cinthia again. For weary months, ever since their abrupt parting on the New York pier, she had been lost to him as wholly as if she were already in her grave. The most eager and anxious inquiry on his part had failed to disclose her whereabouts. With genuine grief--for he was most passionately in love with Cinthia--he had given up the hopeless quest, realizing that nothing but blind chance would ever bring them together again. His pride was cruelly wounded, too, for he felt that if Cinthia had cared for him, she must surely have sent him an answer to the interrupted proposal he had made while they were leaving the steamer arm in arm.