Last evening they had retired early to their rooms, seemingly prostrated with grief over the death of their kind, indulgent parent.
This morning they were missing, and no clew to them could be found.
When St. George Beresford heard this news his heart sunk within him in prophetic dread.
Knowing what he did of Otho and Maybelle’s nocturnal wanderings at Suicide Place, he could come to but one conclusion.
Floy was their prisoner, as Landon had suspected, and fearing detection, they had spirited her away to another place.
“We have come too late!” he cried, bursting into Alva’s presence in a quiver of emotion, and falling wearily into a chair.
“No—no; you must not tell me so,” she exclaimed, with keen regret; and then he poured out the whole story.
Alva saw the situation in all its terror. She did not know what to say to her brother, but she saw that she must offer him some comfort to save him from utter despair.
He had grown frightfully pale, and the despair in his beautiful eyes made her heart ache.
It seemed to her as if his very life was bound up in his sweetheart Floy—as if the failure to find her would surely break his heart.