CHAPTER XIII. IN THE MESHES OF HER HUNGRY FATE.

Floy stood scared and trembling at the head of the stairs, trying to make out what was going on below.

She presently recognized that it was the voice of Mrs. Banks, uplifted in those grievous cries, and a conviction of the truth rushed over her mind--something terrible had happened to John Banks.

The tender-hearted wife had always been nervous over his trade of house-builder--always forebode an accident.

Tears rushed blindingly to Floy’s sweet blue eyes, and her heart sunk heavily as she thought:

“Poor, poor auntie! Her life-long presentiments are realized at last.”

For what else could be meant by those heavy, lumbering steps down-stairs, and those doleful cries in the little house that was usually so calm and peaceful?

She groped with ice-cold fingers for a loose wrapper, threw it over her snowy night-gown, and thrusting her little rosy bare feet into tiny slippers, flew down the stairs.

The little front room seemed full of people.

There were men in working garb, without their coats, and homely neighbor women with their aprons to their eyes. There was _something_ covered up solemnly on a couch, and beside it Mrs. Banks was kneeling, wringing her hands and filling their sorrowing ears with her doleful cries.

Floy rushed to the couch, but an old woman caught and held her back.

“It is Uncle John--I know it! Do not tell me he is dead!” she moaned.

But it was, alas! too true.

He had fallen from a scaffolding on the third story, and death had been instantaneous. The true and tender heart had ceased to beat, the noble nature had passed from earth to its reward in heaven.

“It was that dizziness in his head made him miss his footing. I know it. I begged him to stay at home till he was better, but he said they could not spare him, and now he is gone from me forever!” wailed the stricken widow.

And by the couch of death she and Floy mingled their anguished tears together, both so bitterly bereaved of their loved one and their only supporter.

For when the first days of grief had passed, and their dead had been laid away to rest in the grave-yard beneath the sweet spring flowers, these two, the lonely woman and the helpless girl, had to look the future in the face.

The faithful hands that had toiled for them, the loving heart that had shielded them, these, alas! were no more, and grim poverty stalked into the little cottage now, a guest they could not thrust away.

The carpenter had worked faithfully all his life, but his meager savings had all been swept away by the failure of a savings bank to which he had trusted them. During the last two years of financial panic and stress he had been much out of work, and lately he had just caught up with the rents again, and given his wife and Floy their simple spring outfits.

There was nothing, nothing for them to look to but the labor of their hands. Poor Floy did not know how to do anything useful, they had spoiled and petted her so, and Mrs. Banks, who did plain sewing for the neighbors sometimes, knew that all her profits would not pay the cottage rent.

When the funeral expenses had been paid out of the money for her husband’s last job, there remained to the poor woman only the simple furniture of the tiny cottage and five dollars in her purse.

“What are we to do?” she sobbed, pitifully.

It was then that Maybelle Maury came to the rescue.

“Mamma will employ you in her house as a seamstress; and papa will give Floy a place as salesgirl,” said the dark-eyed beauty, cheerfully.

“Oh, I can not be parted from my child!” exclaimed the unhappy widow, tearfully.

Maybelle curled an imperious lip, and answered:

“That is nonsense! You can not keep Floy with you now. She will have to earn her living like other poor girls!”

Floy, sitting over at the window in dreary silence, thought, exultantly:

“Wait till my lover comes back from Europe, Miss Maybelle, and see! Oh, it will break your proud heart when St. George Beresford marries me! And how he will laugh when I tell him of her grand airs now!”

She longed to startle Maybelle now by telling her that she would have no need to work for her living, that she was soon to marry a millionaire’s son, and could take care of Mrs. Banks in luxury; but she remembered that Beresford had told her not to betray their secret till he gave her leave, because he must first propitiate his own little world. So she kept back the words, and at last said, with a careless little air that angered Maybelle deeply:

“We may as well accept these positions now, dearest auntie, and try to bear the separation as best we can for awhile, but after I am married, and that may be before long, you shall come and live in my new home, and we shall be as happy as possible without our dear lost one!”

She could not forbear this little boast in her resentment against proud Maybelle, and the beauty looked at her angrily while Mrs. Banks exclaimed in smiling astonishment:

“Married--married! Why, who ever put such a notion in that little giddy head? Who would marry a child like you?”

“A child, auntie? Why, I was seventeen the day before the picnic, so I’ll be eighteen my very next birthday, and many a girl is married before eighteen. Why, I may be engaged already for all you know to the contrary--although I don’t swear that I am!” concluded Floy, fearing she had said too much, and not intending to arouse their suspicions.

But Maybelle, who knew from Otho all that had happened at Suicide Place the night when his dastardly plans had been foiled by Beresford’s timely appearance, trembled with inward rage and fear, suspecting Floy’s thinly-veiled meaning.

Otho had left no stone unturned to find out all that had happened to Floy after Beresford took her away that night.

The carriage-driver had been ferreted out and interviewed, although he had nothing to tell except that he had driven the pair to Bird’s Nest Cottage as fast as he could, and that they had lingered and parted at the door like lovers, with a kiss.

In the story of that kiss all was told.

Otho knew that St. George Beresford, unlike the generality of rich young men, was a man of honor.

No young girl’s ruin lay at his door.

He might flirt in a careless, non-committal way if invited to it by a pair of bold eyes, but he never trespassed the proprieties.

Maybelle had led him on as far as any, for she was one of the most accomplished coquettes of the day; but his bearded lips had never pressed the bloom from her lips and cheeks. If languishing eyes had dared and tempted him to the feast, he had most successfully resisted the temptation.

So Otho and his sister, knowing Beresford’s honor and Floy’s purity, knew full well the meaning of that kiss.

It was the sacred pledge of their solemn betrothal.

Ay, though they had known each other scarcely twenty-four hours, they had instantly recognized each other as soul-mates; their hearts had leaped together and melted into one beneath the burning sun of Love.

“When Love, like a red rose, burns and blushes, How sweet is the kiss that warm lips give; The soul’s far deep at its coming hushes The thirsting passions that in them live.”

Otho, mad with love for Floy, and Maybelle for Beresford, knew that something terrible indeed must happen if these two were to be prevented from marrying.

Nothing short of Floy’s death or dishonor would keep the proud young aristocrat from making her his worshipful bride.

Maybelle, in the madness of her jealous love, hated Floy with a terrible hate.

She felt that she had come very near to winning Beresford’s love just before he met Floy.

And she vainly imagined that with Floy removed from her path, she might yet succeed in her heart’s desire.

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?

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. There is plenty of nice, old-fashioned furniture too, and I’m sure we could be comfortable. What do you say?”

But Mrs. Banks almost fainted at the bare idea.

“Oh, my pet, I’d make any sacrifice in the world for you, except that one!” she cried, in horror; and so Floy fell into the meshes of her hungry fate.