“Yes, for a long time, I hope. Her father is in California.” Fred Foster came up, beaming with joy and pride. “Madame Ray, the gods have surely favored me. Have you been hiding at Weir Park all this time while I have roamed up and down the world in weary search for you?” She answered with careless badinage, and Arthur moved away from them to Cinthia, who stood apart outside the door with a cloud on her bonny face. In hoarse, indistinct accents, he murmured: “Miss Dawn, will you permit me the favor of a few words with you? We can walk along this rose-alley, and the others will follow presently.” She bowed silently, and moved on by his side between the rows of blossoming rose-trees that, neglected and untrimmed, threw out long briery arms across the weed-grown path, obliging Arthur now and then to stoop and hold them aside from contact with her rustling silken gown. For a few moments they were quite silent--dangerously silent for two who had not quite unlearned “the sweet, sweet lesson of loving;” for in this charmed spot, that held the echo of lovers’ vows, beneath that blue and sunny sky, with the zephyrs wooing the flowers, were a hundred temptations to go back to the old days and the old love, whose summer had been so brief, whose winter so dark and endless. They both felt it subtly, painfully. Their beautiful faces were pale with secret anguish, their lips trembled with emotion, tears hid beneath the drooping lids of the eyes they dared not raise to each other. But Arthur knew that he must not linger in idle dalliance, that he must break away from the spell of her beauty, that because he was a man, and the stronger one of the two, that for her own sake his hand must break the bonds of loving. He said tremulously, though he tried to make his voice firm: “You must not be angry with me, Cinthia, if I may call you so, for what I am going to say.” She answered not a word, she only trembled like a reed in the wind. Not all her pride, nor all her scorn of his weakness, could make her indifferent to Arthur Varian. He continued, in that low, sad voice: “We have put the past away forever, have we not Cinthia?” What a strange question that was. It made her heart leap with a strangled hope. Did he wish to go back to that past, regretting his folly, craving her pardon and her love again? She flashed him such a swift, startled glance that, misinterpreting it, he cried out, quickly: “Ah, I knew that you could never forgive me. I could never dare to ask it. It is not for myself I wish to plead, but for another.” “Another?” she echoed, faintly. “My cousin Fred loves you madly,” Arthur went on hoarsely. “He is a noble fellow, with but few faults, and has a most lovable nature. Oh, Cinthia, it would make me almost happy if he could win your heart and make you--my cousin.” He paused, and Cinthia uttered one strangling gasp of surprise and pain, and was silent.