“Well, it is true, and Mrs. Beresford saw that your face was the very one Miss Alva wanted as a model for a picture of Cupid that she is painting.”
“Oh!” cried Floy, clasping her hands in wondering delight.
“So she told Miss Alva about you,” continued the detective, “and they decided to try to secure you for a model; but when they went to the store—it was the day after the accident—you had disappeared. So they sent for me to find you.”
He could not understand the wonderful radiance that came upon Floy’s lovely face while he was speaking, making her beauty almost unearthly.
She was thinking, joyously:
“Oh, how blest I am that I have found favor with his mother—my darling’s mother—and his gifted sister! They will take me into his dear home, and I will try to win their love, so that when he comes and finds me there they will be glad that I am his chosen one.”
“Do you like the plan? Will you come with me to Mrs. Beresford?” asked Floyd Landon.
“Oh, so gladly—so gladly!” she cried, in a sort of rapture.
“Then let us lose no time in starting. And—hadn’t you better find some sort of a disguise—a thick veil anyhow—so that you need not be recognized in going through the town?” he suggested.
Floy pulled open the drawers and found an old-fashioned traveling-wrap and thick veil and bonnet. She put these on in a hurry, and they left the house with its grim occupant, Otho Maury, lying silent on the floor, not yet revived from his long swoon.