Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

“ But save in nobility of nature and a tender heart, she was no more like the homely pair than a restless humming-bird is like a toiling honey-bee. She was rarely, exquisitely beautiful, lovable after an imperious fashion, but willful and untamable in disposition, the result of spoiling by a too fond and overindulgent mother, who at the last had deserted her by fleeing from life’s pains and penalties by the forbidden path of suicide.
Floy was heiress by her birth to a small estate and to a terrible taint of blood—the mania for suicide. ”

“ George recalled it now with something like terror—prophetic terror.
He cried to himself, resolutely:
“They shall not break my heart on the rack as they did poor Alva’s. I am a strong man, she was only a weak girl. I will never give up my heart’s love as she did, and drag out a cynical life, enjoying nothing, giving all my soul to cold, lifeless art in lieu of a broken love-dream. No, I shall marry pretty Floy, my heart’s darling, and our life shall be ideally happy.” ”

“ A love dream—we all dream in youth—
But, waking, I found you—
“The real woman, whose first touch
Aroused to highest life
My real manhood. Crown it, then,
Good angel, friend, love, wife!”
“Oh, what lovely words and thoughts!” cried Floy, reading them again for the twentieth time; and she added, half in pity for cruel, jealous Maybelle: “How it must have stabbed her heart to read these tender words addressed to me! It must have been punishment enough for all her sin.”
She was right; for what could be more cruel pain to a jealous, envious heart than to read those words of love to another? ”

“ There may be other pride than that of wealth and place.
“‘I, little Floy Fane, the daughter of a most unfortunate race, born to a heritage of sorrow, poor and alone in life, am yet too proud to thrust myself upon a family that despises me, yet whose equal I feel myself to be in all but money—that mere dross to a truly noble heart.
“‘So I have left you forever. I am glad that I have been of some use to you. I pity you and love you, for it seems to me that pride has made shipwreck of your own life. Love has no part in it, and you are not happy. ”

“ They were blissfully happy in this dream that Floy was dreaming there that May night in the grim shadow of Suicide Place.
But suddenly a dark, portentous cloud overspread the sky, and a low rumble of thunder shook the earth.
The soft voice of the sea changed to a hollow roar, as though a storm were lashing its waves into fury, and the tender music wailed itself into silence like the cry of a broken heart. The winds rose and lashed the rose-trees in a furious gale, till the air was full of their flying petals and spicy perfumes. ”

“ When in some dream of tenderness
His truant fancy wanders.”
The purple gloaming deepened, the shadows grew darker in the gloomy room, until even the eyes of love could not distinguish the written words; so Floy laid her letters upon the little table before her, and fell to dreaming over them in tender wise:
“Seven letters! and such beautiful long ones, too! Oh, how good he was to write me such charming love letters! Can such love ever grow cold, I wonder? Can he ever look back and regret? Ah, no, no, no! I will not remember the stories of false love I have read and heard. ”

“ Love, ambition, and jealousy combined had transformed Maybelle from a merely selfish, domineering girl into a relentless fiend. She felt as if she would like to murder innocent Floy with her laughing blue eyes, and her saucy, winning smile so frank and ready. Why should this girl, socially her inferior, and with only a babyish kind of beauty, have won in one brief, fateful day the prize that Maybelle had schemed for long, weary months, and which she would have sold her soul to win? ”

“ No, I have seen nothing, but—the spirits of the damned haunt that house as surely as we two live and breathe. If you could hear them, Mr. Beresford, those sounds of woe that echo through the long corridors and empty rooms, that fiend’s laugh that chills your blood like ice, and drives you back, shuddering from the threshold, out into the cool darkness of the summer night so sweet and peaceful, you would no longer cry out coward; you, too, would turn and fly.”
“Not I, Landon; not I. All the hordes of hell assembled could not frighten me back from my darling in peril!” ”

“ It was no wonder that the fiends’ laugh echoed no longer through the dark, grim halls of Suicide Place, since its awful Moloch had claimed the sacrifice of the sixth decade.
Beresford and his sister stood as if turned to stone upon the threshold, gazing in upon that awful sight, on which the sun’s last rays flickered dismally, as if in pity.
No wonder Otho and Maybelle had not returned last night! No wonder their disappearance remained so deep a mystery! They lay here dead in that awful house where scarcely a human foot dared penetrate. ”

“ But we must turn our attention from other interests for awhile to follow the fortunes of our unhappy heroine, lovely Floy.
How sadly her fortunes had altered since we first saw her flashing through the streets of Mount Vernon on her bicycle, a vision of beauty, light of heart, and careless as a joyous little humming-bird!
Love and sorrow had come to her as it comes to many, hand in hand, saddening her heart and changing her life.
Her life in those weeks with Alva had been widened in its scope. The clever and intelligent Alva had taught her many things. ”

“ It seemed like a ghastly legacy to Floy, and she tried to atone for the sin of old Jasper Nellest, by devoting more than half of it to works of charity.
She had seen so much of the world’s poverty and sorrow while she was poor herself, that she knew how to pity and sympathize, and, better still, to lend a helping hand.
She did not neglect to search out the good Mrs. Banks, who was now adrift on the world since poverty had fallen on the Maury family, and oh! what joy it was to the kind soul to see Floy again, whom she had mourned as dead. ”

“ It was two months now since their parting at the cottage door, in the May moonlight, under the drooping vines that shaded the porch—two months since that last kiss of love so true and warm and tender.
The burning heats of July held the world in their hot grasp, and the little spring flowers were faded and gone, as were the tender hopes of Floy’s heart.
But all that last day she busied herself, flitting hither and thither, helping Alva to make the house beautiful for the returning dear ones.
“My brother loves flowers, especially roses, most dearly; so we will have roses everywhere,” said Alva. ”

“ Beresford could find no words in which to express his surprise and chagrin.
He could only stare, speechlessly, at the detective waiting for an explanation.
He saw that Landon looked pale and nervous.
“You are ill!” he exclaimed, at last, as if that explained all.
“No, I am not ill, but—I—have had—a great shock—so that I can not bring myself to go on with the search for Miss Fane. You must employ some one else.”
“But who can succeed where you have failed, Landon? You, the bravest, cleverest detective in New York!” ”

“ She looked wistfully at Beresford, sighing:
“I do not wish to die now, though all the best things of life have slipped away from me. But—but I seem to be sinking away.”
“Have you any last words—any wish?” he began.
“Yes, one wish.” She seemed to forget Alva’s presence, or not to care. “Will you—kiss me—just once?—I have loved you so!”
Her voice was pathetic in its hopeless yearning, and Alva motioned him to obey. She knew that noble little Floy would not grudge this one caress to her dying rival.
So Beresford gave the one kiss that was a joyful memory in all Maybelle’s future years. ”

“ When she thought of Floy’s possessing Beresford for her very own, of the love and caresses she craved being lavished on the little beauty, she felt as if her heart leaped into her throat and choked her. She grew lividly pale with emotion.
She could not speak for a moment after Floy’s little boast, and the young girl continued, lightly:
“But, auntie, we needn’t really be parted at all. Why can’t we go and live together at Suicide Place? It’s mine, you know, and much grander, after all, than Bird’s Nest Cottage. ”

“ You might have been killed,” he began; and the girl answered, sadly enough:
“It would not have mattered much; life is so sad.”
“Sad? For one so young, and—pardon me—so lovely?” exclaimed her new friend, in surprise.
Floy answered, out of the bitterness of her sad heart:
“I am only a poor orphan, sir, with no relatives and but few friends. To such a one life offers little happiness.”
“That is true,” assented the nobleman, with keen sympathy; and a great wave of tenderness swept over him for the lovely, hapless child of misfortune. ”

“ Such a face! all dimples and roses, blue eyes, and rings of golden hair on the graceful boyish head. And her smile—it was something to dream of were one a man—saucy, sweet, enchanting—such a smile as Cupid himself might wear when drawing his bow to transfix a heart. Well,” drawing a long breath, “I meant to go to-morrow morning and secure this little beauty as a model for Alva’s Cupid, but to punish her now I shall not do so, so the charming picture will never be painted.” ”

“ I must win him or die! All in a minute I feel desperately wicked, and willing to do anything to win him for my own. I hate that girl already, and wish her dead! Why does she not go and kill herself like her mother?”
“Probably she will in the end; but she isn’t unhappy enough yet.”
“Then let us do something to drive her mad with despair at once!” cried Maybelle, feverishly, recklessly, her dark eyes flashing with a tigerish light not good to see.
Otho’s eyes flashed back the same spirit, for his heart [15] was burning with a cruel passion for bonny Floy. ”

“ Can you imagine anything living so perfectly beautiful?” she repeated.
Slowly, without taking his eyes from the lovely face, St. George replied, dreamily:
“Yes, I can imagine it, for I knew the original in all her living beauty, the fairest among women. Oh! my sister, how exquisitely you have reproduced her upon canvas! This picture must be mine, mine only—all that is left me of poor dead Floy.”
They drew close to him—father, mother, sister—and Alva caught his hand.
“What is that you mean? Have you ever known this girl Floy—my lovely model?” she exclaimed. ”

“ You gaze spell-bound, but the hideous old miser begins to laugh with hideous mirth, gloating over his wealth, till you fly in deadly terror from the scene. But, alas! only to return, goaded by an awful desire to search the old place over for the missing gold. You search in vain, and the old miser seems to gloat over your failures with his demon laughter; and then—then—the rage, the fear, the baffled desire for the treasure—seem to combine to drive one mad, so that this”—she shuddered as she pointed at Otho’s still form—“comes naturally as the awful finale. ”

“ Alva had despaired of putting on canvas the face of Cupid as it appeared to her fancy.
Beautiful faces she could find in plenty, but the arch, radiant smile, the laughing eyes so brightly blue, these eluded her brush.
“If I could only find a living face like my ideal and put it on canvas!” she cried, eagerly, over and over to her [90] mother, who at last became almost as anxious over the subject as Alva herself.
It was no wonder that the lady had told Floy she had looked at her as at a beautiful picture, for in the young girl’s enchanting face she had seen the realization of Alva’s dream. ”

“ Before she met him, Maybelle had been simply a handsome, selfish girl, ambitious to make a grand match—even to secure a title, if possible.
Mrs. Vere de Vere had abetted all her desires; but no grand suitor had fallen into the net they spread until Beresford’s careless flirting had awakened hopes never to be realized, and, alas! roused the sleeping devil in a nature well endowed with capabilities for evil.
What a potent factor is Love in all the affairs of life. ”

“ We loved at first sight.”
“It is a great pity for the rich and poor to fall in love with each other. It can not end happy!” cried Floy, out of the bitterness of her own experience.
“How cynically you speak! Has the world already made you so wise?” exclaimed Lord Miller, in surprise; but Floy blushed without replying, unwilling to betray herself further.
And again he took up the thread of his story:
“I see that you understand what a mésalliance it would be considered for the heir to a title to marry a poor governess, though she was pure as an angel and beautiful as a princess. ”

“ She had come down in the carriage to meet them, and tears flashed into her bright eyes as she looked at her darling brother so pale, so changed, so sad.
Her mother had written to her simply that her son’s love affair was ended forever, making no mention of the girl’s death, and Alva had been very indignant, saying to Floy:
“Mamma has made him give up his love. I feared she would, but I hoped St. George would hold out against her arguments. I see how it is. He loves mamma so dearly—never son adored a mother so blindly—and she has made him think that the girl is unworthy of him.” ”