Mrs. Banks was wretched at the thought of being parted from Floy, whom she loved as dearly as if she had been her own child.

Tears sprung to her eyes, and she cried piteously:

“Oh, Miss Maybelle, how can I let my child go into that great wicked city of New York, with all its terrible temptations to a poor girl who has to earn her bread! Couldn’t I go, too, and watch over her young life?”

“How could you go? Floy will only earn five dollars a week, and that will barely provide her board, lodging, car-fare, and clothing,” answered Maybelle.

“Good heavens! I should say not,” cried Mrs. Banks, in dismay. “But, oh, I did not mean to live on Floy’s small earnings. Couldn’t I get work in the city, too? If we had only one little room together, we could be happier than apart.”

“Yes; I should not mind it so much if only you could be with me, dear,” added Floy, eagerly.

But Maybelle was relentless.

The success of the plot she had in her mind depended on the separation of these two, who seemed to have no one in the world but each other.

So she persisted in throwing cold water on all the woman’s plans, declaring that there were thousands of women out of work and starving in the great city, and that her father was doing Floy a great favor in giving her this position when hundreds of others would have been so glad to get it.

“And mamma can recommend Floy to a good lodging-house,” she added. “It is kept by a woman who used to keep house for us when I was a child. She married a car-driver, and went to live in New York. She has been keeping a salesgirls’ boarding-house ten years, and they have a charming home with her, I am sure. So Floy will be as safe with her as under your own protection.”

“And you think she is a good woman, and will be kind to my poor child, Miss Maybelle?”

“Yes, indeed!” earnestly.

“That takes a load off my mind, I assure you, and I will write this woman a special letter, or perhaps I had better go with Floy to New York myself and talk with this Mrs. ——”

“Horton,” said Maybelle.

“Yes, Horton—thank you.”

“Very well—if you can spare the money for the trip—although a letter would do just as well, and papa would take Floy to New York with him any morning and put her in the woman’s care.”

“Do you think he would be so kind?” exclaimed Mrs. Banks, reminded by Maybelle’s hints of her scarcity of money, and thinking that she had better save what she had for a little nest-egg for Floy to take with her in case of sickness or other needs, for her salary would be such a miserable pittance.

In the end, Maybelle persuaded her to send Mrs. Horton a letter instead of going to New York herself, so at parting with Floy she pressed the five-dollar bill into the girl’s hand, whispering tenderly:

“You may need it, dear.”

Floy thrust it back, crying out:

“It is your little all, I can not take it!”

“Yes, you must, my darling, for I shall have more from the sale of the furniture, you know.”

Floy kept it reluctantly. She vowed that she never would use it except in case of direst need.

And so with tears in her eyes, and her sweet bright face clouded with trouble, she parted from the good woman who had been like a mother to her for almost ten years, and went her way to the city with Mr. Maury, who was acting in good faith toward the girl, and did not dream that his son and daughter, in begging him to give Floy a place in his store, were only using him as a tool to further the nefarious designs they had against the poor girl’s happiness.

But the pair of plotters were in haste to get in their cruel work, for they knew that St. George Beresford did not expect to remain away more than a month.

In that month they must accomplish the task they had set themselves—to build a wall between Floy and Beresford too high for either to scale, in short, to make that parting at the cottage door an eternal separation.

Maybelle had called at the cottage with her father to see Floy off, and when the parting was over she turned to the sobbing Mrs. Banks, and asked, curiously:

“What was it that she ran back to whisper to you at the last moment?”

Mrs. Banks did not dream how much was involved in her answer. She thought it a matter of little moment, and answered, carelessly:

“She told me that if any letters came for her to Mount Vernon to send them to her at once in New York.”

“So she has a correspondent?” Maybelle muttered, jealously.

“Why, no, indeed, miss; I don’t believe the child ever received a letter in her whole life. I think she must have meant it for fun, for who would write her a letter? She has no relations that she knows of, and no real friend but me, poor little one!”

“Perhaps she has a clandestine love affair.”

“No, indeed, Miss Maybelle; I’m sure not. She was only joking.”

“Well, Mrs. Banks, I must go now. Shall I tell mamma that you will come to-morrow?”

“If you please, miss, for I shall get things ready to have the auction sale of my household effects in the morning.”

Maybelle hurried away, and her next interview was with the letter-carrier for that district.

She told him that Florence Fane had gone to New York to live, and had requested her—Miss Maybelle Maury—to receive any letters that might come to her address. He was to deliver them privately to her keeping, that her aunt might not discover the correspondence she was carrying on.

The carrier promised compliance.