“How he loves me, my noble, splendid, beautiful, dark-eyed lover! He has chosen me, simple little Floy, poor and obscure, out of a whole world of rich and beautiful girls, any one of whom must have loved him if he had so chosen,” she cried in an ecstasy of adoring love.
She was alone in a large, gloomy bedroom of Suicide Place, for, as Otho had suspected, on hearing Maybelle’s story to-day, she was here in hiding from her foes.
She had been most indiscreet in her adventure last night, but the longing to possess the letters Beresford had written to her overpowered every other impulse; so, trusting that Maybelle might take her for a ghost, the brave little beauty made a determined onslaught and secured her own property, escaping undetected through the open window that looked upon an upper veranda wreathed in fragrant vines.
“What a wretch she was to obtain my letters in that fashion! I am glad I thought of going to see the good carrier and finding out the truth, or I never should have had these sweet words to read!” cried Floy, kissing them again, as she had done dozens of times already to-day.
In the falling twilight she sat at the upper window behind the lace curtain that screened her from view outside, and read and reread the precious trophies in artless delight, her heart throbbing fast with joy at each tender word.
“What a fortunate girl I am to have won such a splendid lover!” she thought, with innocent pride and exultation, for her tender young heart yearned for love and care, she was so lonely.
Floy did not realize all her great charms of mind and person, and in her lack of vanity she was always wondering how the splendid Beresford had chosen her so quickly for his heart’s queen out of a whole world full lovely girls.
“I seek you—you alone I seek;
All other women fair
Or wise or good may go their way,