She had told him frankly that she admired and esteemed him, but had no love to give. If he was willing to wait, to give her time to cultivate a warmer feeling, she would try her best to learn, and on these terms he based their betrothal. To Cinthia herself it seemed as if she must surely grow fond of him in time, he was so handsome, so splendid, so devoted. She argued to herself that in time her love for Arthur must surely be overcome by her contempt for his weakness and cowardice that had brought sorrow into both their lives. Yet, as she watched his pale and sorrowful face while the train sped on its way, she felt a rush of painful tenderness flooding her heart, while she wondered why he was taking so much to heart the trouble that had fallen on herself. Everard Dawn was nothing to him--nothing except a man he had cause to dislike, because he had prevented his marriage to his daughter--yet his pallor, his sadness, his preoccupation were effects that might have been produced by the death of a near relative. Cinthia, drooping in her seat, with a thick veil drawn over her pallid face, could not keep her eyes from her old lover, could not repress the rush of tenderness that made her heart ache. She would have liked--she, the promised bride of Frederick Foster--to have thrown her arms about Arthur Varian’s neck, pressed her pale cheek to his, and whispered in the passion of her womanly love: “Why are you so pale, so sad, my best beloved? Is it for me? Has Frederick told you that I have promised to marry him, and are you grieved? Perhaps the old love is not dead yet in your heart, perhaps it cries for me in the dead of night as my heart for you. Oh, is it too late to go back, to thrust aside everything but the imperious demands of our love, and be happy yet?” A sudden wild thought yet came to her and made her heart leap: “Only let me find my father yet alive, and he shall explain the mystery of his opposition to my marriage with Arthur. She, too, is there, Arthur’s mother, who for the sake of her hatred of my father and mother was willing to wreck our happiness forever. Who knows but that when both are dead, both my mother and father, her cruel revenge may be satiated so that she may be willing to let love have its way.” It would have startled Frederick Foster, who hovered near her with eager attentions, to find how little part he had in her thoughts and dreams, for a faint trembling hope had come to her heart that perhaps the death of her father might have some effect on her relations with Arthur, might possibly restore them to happiness. Arthur, meanwhile, knowing the futility of all hope in Cinthia’s direction, gave himself up to unrestrained melancholy, in which blended considerable curiosity as to how it happened that his mother and Mr. Dawn had been together at Charlottesville.