CHAPTER LII. ALL THAT FLOY HAD LONGED FOR IN OTHER DAYS WAS HERS

NOW.--LUCKY LITTLE MORTAL!

The Beresfords returned to New York the next day sick at heart and dispirited, for the mystery of Floy’s fate was more inexplicable than ever.

In twenty-four hours after their return Lord Miller’s card was received.

Mrs. Beresford was out, and St. George was ill again from the fever of a baffled hope.

So Alva went down alone to meet the handsome Englishman, and their mutual attraction toward each other was strengthened by this interview.

His earnest sympathy with her brother tempted her to confide the story of Floy to his sympathetic ears.

He listened in wonder to it all, and then she ended with a sigh:

“He is ill again, my poor brother, and no mortal physician can heal the wound from which he suffers--the pain of hopeless love.”

He looked at the bright, beautiful face, wondering how she should know so much of what she spoke, then he said, abruptly:

“I wonder if your brother would see me a little while if I could give him good news?”

“Good news?” she faltered.

“Yes, of this girl--this Floy Fane. I know where she is to-day.”

Alva almost fainted with joy. He never forgot her looks of gratitude and her expressions of joy.

“Come with me!” she cried; and led him to her brother’s rooms.

“I have brought you a physician with news to make you well!” she cried, radiantly, to the pale, languid invalid.

And then Lord Miller told them of his _rencontre_ with Floy the night of his return to New York, and his discovery that she was his own child.

We must pass over their delight and amazement when the romantic story was all told, and he ended by saying:

“I left Floy at the hotel, very busy looking over a few thousand dollars’ worth of finery she purchased yesterday, but if you both will return with me, I think she will be glad to see you.”

“Are you well enough dear?” inquired Alva, looking at her brother doubtfully.

He leaned upon her, his face flushed, his eyes alight with joy.

“I am a new man. I do not feel as if I ever had been ill,” he repeated, joyfully.

So leaving an explanation for their parents, should they return in their absence, Alva and her brother accompanied Lord Miller to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in search of Floy.

“And to think how near she was to me while I was breaking my heart over her loss!” thought the happy lover.

He wondered if Floy would be glad to see him again, and his heart throbbed a happy response. He had the greatest confidence in his darling’s truth.

“Lady Florence is in her own parlor,” said the servant whom Lord Miller asked for his daughter.

Lady Florence! How strange that sounded to Alva and St. George! Yet it was her rightful title now.

Little Floy was never to know again the ills of poverty and loneliness. All that she had sighed for in other days was hers now--love, wealth, position. Lucky little mortal!

She had been amusing herself all day trying on her new dresses and jewels, but after all they did not fill her tender little heart. There was an ache there all the time because of her grief for her fickle lover.

“I wish that he could see me now. This gown is so becoming,” she thought, artlessly, rejoicing in the possession of the cool white robe so soft and billowy in its fine laces and streaming ribbons.

At that moment three people were at the door, and Lord Miller opened it without knocking.

“Oh, let us wait outside!” cried Alva, with a romantic impulse, drawing back as St. George crossed the threshold.

Neither do we want to make a third at the reunion of the long parted lovers, reader, so we will wait outside with the other couple, for we can guess at all that passed. Haven’t we all been there ourselves?

Ah! happy love! Is it not a foretaste of Paradise?

Lord Miller found that he had recovered his lovely child only to lose her again.

St. George was the most persistent lover in the world.

He pleaded continually for an early marriage.

“Floy is nothing but a child, barely seventeen. Wait till her eighteenth birthday,” answered the fond father.

The lover was most unhappy over the year’s probation.

“I can not bear to lose sight of my darling again. I give you warning I shall follow you to England when you take her away--ay, to the world’s end!” he protested.

Lord Miller answered, laughingly:

“I shall extend you a cordial invitation to be our guest at our English home for as long as you please,” and with that the lover had to be content, for even his own parents, though they loved Floy so dearly, took part against him.

“It is right that her father should have her for a time,” they said; and Floy, who adored her noble parent, was well satisfied to have it so. She knew quite well, the saucy little darling, that St. George would seldom be absent from her side in that year of waiting.

They would not sail for their ancestral home until October, anyway, for they had much to do in America.

For one thing, Lord Miller had to seek out his wife’s neglected grave, and place a fitting monument above the gentle heart that his father’s wickedness had driven wild with despair. The thought of all she had suffered would haunt Lord Miller with keen despair as long as he lived.

Then, too, a great force of men was put to work on Suicide Place, to tear it down stone by stone to the ground, that its haunting spirit should claim no more maddened victims of the craze for gold. Even the grove was hewn down, that the very site should be forgotten, and Lady Florence presented the farm to Mount Vernon to be turned into a pleasure park.

The chests of gold that had been seen in ghastly visions of the night by so many poor victims were found to be a reality.

They were walled up in stone beneath the brick flooring of the cellar, and contained riches to the amount of half a million.

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.

She rejoiced unselfishly in the girl’s good fortune, and wept when she clasped her in her arms, exclaiming:

“You shall come and live with me now, and be rich and grand.”

“Oh, dearie, I could never go away from Mount Vernon and my poor John’s grave!” she cried in her simple, faithful fidelity.

Lady Florence wept with her as she answered:

“But I cannot stay here with you now, and I do so want to make you happy. I have plenty of money, you know, and I want to give you as much as you want.”

“God bless you, my sweet child, for your offer. It will make my heart glad just to raise a pretty stone over my husband’s grave, and to go back to live in the little cottage again.”

Lady Florence gratified her simple wishes, and settled on her a sum of money that kept her in luxury a life-time, with a stout servant to wait on her, and an elderly cousin for a companion.

“And next year, you know, auntie, I am to have a grand wedding at our English home, Earlscourt, and you shall promise me now that you will cross the sea with the Beresfords to see me married,” continued Lady Florence, blushingly.

Mrs. Banks was very proud of the invitation, and many good people in Mount Vernon envied her because she was so loved by the earl’s fair daughter. They forgot that she had earned it all by her goodness to the lonely orphan child when her friends were few, and when they had sneered at her girlish pranks and given her the soubriquet of Fly-away Floy.

Lord Miller would be very lonely when his daughter should leave him for her husband’s home, and one day, when he was grieving over it, Floy, said, roguishly:

“Get Alva to stay with you when I come away. She would make a magnificent countess.”

“The very thing that was in my mind,” he answered, quickly; and before he left America he told Alva of his wish.

“If you can be satisfied with a second love, I will make you a devoted husband,” he said.

And Alva replied with a like confidence:

“My first love, too, is dead, but you have won my heart. I believe that we can be very happy together,” she admitted, frankly.

And because Lady Florence would need her so much in the year before her marriage, she consented to an early wedding, and sailed with them in October to her new home far across the sea.

THE END.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller was the pen name for Mittie Frances Clark Point.

This novel was first serialized in the _Fireside Companion_ story paper from July 27, 1895 to October 12, 1895 under the title “Fly-Away Floy, the Saucy Little Darling; or, the Mystery of Suicide Place.”

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

The following changes were made:

p. 97: “and” was assumed for unclear word in original text (save and except)

p. 110: “foes” was assumed for unclear word in original text (from her foes.)

p. 198: “I” was assumed for missing word in original text (perhaps I have)