In the letter that Alva Beresford treated as a merry jest, St. George had poured out the tenderness of a love-freighted heart to his mother.

When he parted from Floy that night beneath the vines on the cottage porch and hurried away to perform the mission on which he was sent across the sea, his heart was full of her grace and beauty, and every hour seemed leaden-winged that kept him from her side.

“How beautiful she is, how far above all others in her ineffable grace and charm!” he said to himself every hour; and in his impatience to have her for his own he could not wait till his return to propitiate his mother, for whose sympathy he yearned with the eagerness of a loving son. He determined to write to her and plead his cause.

He knew, alas! all the Beresford pride, and how high it soared. Had not Alva’s heart been crucified on its altar?—gay, mocking Alva, in whose past lay the story of a broken love-dream never to be resurrected now, for he was dead, the young poet lover whose suit her parents had scorned when Alva was a budding girl, fit incarnation of a poet’s dream. It was only a few months later that he died—of a lingering fever, said the physicians—of a broken heart, vowed the girl, flinging it frantically in her parents’ face in the desperation of her keen despair.

Well, the key was turned on that past. Few knew the story of its bitter pathos, but St. 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.”

So he mused while pacing the steamer-deck the long starlit nights, and one day the letter was written to his mother, telling of his love, and begging for her approval.

Then he wrote to his little sweetheart—the first letter he had ever penned to her, and it was so full of his love and hope, that, had Floy received it, her heart would have thrilled for joy at the story it told—the story that blanched Maybelle’s cheek with rage, for she, according to her plans, received Floy’s letter from the postman, and ruthlessly broke the seal in the solitude of her chamber.

And how jealously her bosom throbbed, how ashen grew her cheek, as she read the burning words of love written to her innocent little rival, bonny Floy.

It seemed to her that a love so true as that expressed in those pages could never be turned aside from its object save by some fateful tragedy. Floy seemed to fill his heart to overflowing.

He left the ship at Queenstown, and posted his letters. Then, having attended to some business in Ireland, he crossed over to London to pursue his mission, counting in his heart every day and hour until he should receive answers from Floy and his mother, for he had begged them for immediate replies.

And every day he wrote again to Floy—love letters full of the tenderness that thrilled his heart.

A week passed, then another, and he knew the time had come when he might begin to look for letters if his correspondents were prompt.

It was now three weeks since he had left New York, but his hope of returning in a month was nipped in the bud.

The business on which his father had dispatched him dragged wearily along, and did not promise to turn out successfully. His lawyer said frankly that it would very likely detain him another month.

Just as he was beginning to chafe impatiently over the delay, came the anxiously awaited letter from his mother.

Oh! how eagerly he broke the seal, the color flying to his face, his heart beating like a trip-hammer.

For he longed for the approval of his family on his choice, longed for them to love and admire pretty Floy as he did, longed to take her to the great stately home where she would be like a glancing sunbeam in the grand surroundings.

He snatched the letter from its thick perfumed envelope, and his eager brown eyes glanced down the thickly-written pages penned by the hand of his beautiful, proud mother.

How could she be so cruel to the boy she loved so dearly?

Had she forgotten the tortured heart of Alva, that she could doom her son to a like anguish?

Poor Alva—belle, beauty, and heiress—yet—poor Alva!

Whispering in her empty heart the name of one that died heart-broken for her sake!

Yes, the pride of birth and wealth that had stood between Alva and her happiness now threatened shipwreck also to her brother’s bark of love.

Mrs. Beresford, in a passion of imperious anger, denounced the weakness and folly of her son.

She wrote, bitterly:

Every scathing word sunk deep into her son’s heart, and with an inarticulate cry of anger and pain, he tore the offensive letter into ribbons, and cast it beneath his feet, trampling it as if it had been a living serpent.

“I might have known it!” he cried, bitterly. “They did not spare poor Alva, and they will not spare me! But I am not a child as my sister was. I will show them I am made of sterner stuff!”

He raged up and down the floor, his eyes blazing with insulted pride.

Though he had destroyed the letter, he could see in his mind’s eye every offensive word standing out clearly, as though traced with a pen of fire.

He muttered in savage wrath, blended with wounded pride:

“Such cruel epithets—‘this nobody’—‘this scheming adventuress’—‘some second-rate actress’—‘such a creature’—oh, shame! that my lovely, innocent, pure-minded Floy should be insulted thus! Well, I will show them how I will come to my senses!”

He threw himself down at a table with his face on his arm, his broad shoulders heaving with emotion.

Long minutes passed while he fought the battle between filial duty and affection and the strong love of his life—strong and eternal, though such a short time ago he had not seen her face nor heard her name.

Love had passed over his soul like a torrent, bearing everything before it. To some deep natures love comes like this, and then it is either a tragedy of pain or a heaven of bliss.

Beresford lifted his head, his face transfigured with its passionate love and wounded pride.

Drawing a sheet of paper to him, he seized a pen, and wrote rapidly:

It was signed and posted, the brief letter, and then he realized the might of his love for Floy, that could reconcile him to such a renunciation as he had made.

He was no longer the heir of a millionaire, but a disinherited son, with nothing to live on but an income of three thousand a year left him by his grandfather. What then? He and Floy would be poor in gold, but rich in love. He could bear anything, so that she was not taken away from him.

Two days passed, and then there came another letter from New York. It was from Otho Maury—a smooth, fawning letter, pleading the paragraph he inclosed as an excuse for writing.

It was the story of poor little Floy’s accident, and Otho wrote briefly of what had happened to Floy since Beresford had gone away—the death of John Banks, and Floy’s venture as a salesgirl in New York, with the unaccountable accident that had closed the brief story of her sweet life; for at the end of the paragraph Otho penciled:

St. George Beresford could not bear the terrible shock of this letter, following on the excitement of his mother’s denunciation.

His senses reeled before it, and he sunk in a heavy swoon to the floor, where an attendant discovered him presently and summoned a physician, who found him suffering from the first symptoms of brain fever.

Days and weeks of severe illness followed; but before he fell into a delirium he gave strict orders that no news of his condition should be sent to America.