“My brother loves flowers, especially roses, most dearly; so we will have roses everywhere,” said Alva.
Floy’s heart beat fast, and she flushed, then paled again, as she remembered that strange dream of roses—hers and St. George’s—that summer night of their first meeting—the dream that had seemed to draw their hearts closer together.
“But his love grew cold before the sweet roses faded,” she sighed from the bottom of her sad young heart.
Then something seemed to whisper tauntingly:
“He is rich, and grand, and handsome, and can choose from the proudest women in the world. You should have known from the first that you could not hold his fickle fancy—a simple little maiden like you.”
As she passed and repassed the grand plate-glass mirrors she would look into them anxiously, and with dissatisfaction.
She saw that she was wonderfully lovely, that her hair was bright as spun gold, her eyes as blue as violets, her mouth a budding rose, her complexion as gloriously tinted as a rose-lipped sea-shell, her dimples entrancing—but after all it seemed to her a babyish kind of beauty.
She thought that the dark queenly style of beauty of Alva and Maybelle was hundred times more attractive than her blonde type of beauty.
Poor little Floy was sadly changed since she had heard that her lover’s heart had grown cold.
She had lost the sauciness from her smile, the sparkle from her eyes, and now and then a low, repressed sigh heaved her tortured breast.