“Do you think so? Well, I shall defy the fate to which I was born, and break the charm of Suicide Place. If, following the taint in my blood, I must indeed kill myself, I shall disappoint everybody in the location. It shall not be at the old farm, but—here!”
Then all at once the startling tragedy happened.
Floy stepped to the edge of the bank with a strange, mocking laugh on her red lips, and, as if the terrible mania had seized on her suddenly, red-handed and implacable as fate itself, she threw up her arms above her beautiful head, and leaped into the river that divided hungrily to receive the girlish form, then closed again greedily over its prey.
CHAPTER V.
THE REASON WHY.
Pretty Floy’s startling, unexpected, and terrible action produced the effect of a thunder-clap on the gay and thoughtless crowd of young people who witnessed it.
A moment of blank, awed silence ensued, then every one seemed to join in a cry of alarm and dismay as they pressed forward to the banks and watched the eddying circles of water over the deep and dangerous spot where that lovely form had disappeared from view.
They watched eagerly for the golden head to reappear.
Meanwhile, Otho Maury sat motionless gazing at the water, his face marble-white, but in his eyes, beneath their lowered lids, a strange and devilish gleam of joy, as he thought to himself:
“How deuced clever in the little girl to hasten the dénouement of her life like this! It saves Maybelle and me a world of trouble.”