Floy went home that evening from the store with a blithe heart.

The meeting with St. George Beresford’s mother had been a delight to the innocent girl.

The great lady’s graciousness had thrilled her with hope.

She remembered how anxiously her lover had admitted that he must conciliate his little world before his marriage.

It seemed to her simple mind that Mrs. Beresford had been won over already.

“She told me I was pretty—that she was looking at me as if I had been a picture; she can not be angry with her son for loving me,” she murmured, sagely, and she decided that if he should write her a letter from abroad she would answer it at once, telling him all that had happened since their parting and of her pleasant rencontre with his charming mother.

Dimpling with happy smiles, the fragment of a love-song on her rosy lips, Floy climbed the uncarpeted stairs to her own poor little den, away up under the eaves in the fourth story, where a minute later she was followed by her landlady, pudgy Mrs. Horton.

The woman carried in her hand a beautiful bunch of roses and a letter.

“These came for you awhile ago, Miss Fane,” she said, blandly.

“From whom?” exclaimed Floy, in surprise.

“Some of your beaus, I suppose. Better read the letter and see,” the woman returned good-naturedly.

Floy tore it open with nervous fingers, and read these words written in an elegant masculine hand:

Floy stood motionless and pale to the lips, gazing at the letter as if it had been a Gorgon’s head and had turned her to stone.

“Oh, Miss Fane, I hope it’s not bad news!” cried the landlady.

Floy roused herself from her trance of indignation, and answered, angrily:

“Mrs. Horton, if a gentleman calls for me this evening you will kindly tell him I am not at home. As for these flowers, you may have them or throw them out of the window.”

“Thank you kindly, miss,” replied the woman, taking them down to ornament her stuffy little parlor.

And there Otho Maury found them when he made his call. He crushed an oath under his black mustache as he asked, eagerly:

“Is Miss Fane at home?”

“Lor’, Mr. Maury, are you the one that sent her the flowers?”

“Yes,” he replied, coldly.

“Oh, sir, I’m sorry to tell you, but she burned your letter and gave me the roses, and told me to say she was not at home!” blurted out Mrs. Horton, in her amasement at Floy’s antagonism to this charming exquisite.

Otho repressed his rage, and said, gratingly:

“That’s strange. Wonder how I have offended the young woman? She used to be awfully fond of me at Mount Vernon. There’s some misunderstanding, and if I could see her one moment I know I could set it straight with the pretty little vixen. Mightn’t I just go up and knock at her door?”

“I don’t see as there’d be any great harm, sir. It’s the fourth flight, No. 19.”

Floy had forgotten to lock her door after Mrs. Horton went, she was so angrily intent on setting a match to Otho’s letter.

“How dare he persecute me so?” she cried, with flashing eyes as she watched it shrivel to ashes.

The tea-bell rang, but she did not heed it. She was too excited to be conscious of hunger.

She lighted her lamp, bathed her hot face, brushed out her tangled curls, then raised the window and looked down into the street at the motley crowds beneath the glaring lights.

She was startled from a long reverie by the soft opening and closing of her door.

Turning about with a cry of alarm, Floy saw Otho Maury standing with his back against the door, an insolent smile of triumph on his lips.

“Floy, let me speak to you one moment,” he pleaded humbly.

“No, I will not listen. How dare you come up here? Leave the room this instant, you villain!” she cried out in stormy anger.

“By Heaven, I will not go, you pretty little vixen, till you hear me. Oh, Floy, I love you; I offer you my heart and protection! Will you accept them? No! Then I swear I’ll have the kiss you denied me that other night!”

Maddened with passion for the scornful young beauty, he advanced toward her, and in her terrible fright at the thought of his loathed caress, she leaned her slight body far over the sill, and sent her voice ringing down to the street in agonized shrieks:

“Help! help! help!”

“Oh, horror! horror!”

It was Otho who cried out then, for the girl suddenly lost her balance and plunged headlong through the window, going down, down, down, through the dizzy distance to a terrible death!