It was Otho who cried out then, for the girl suddenly lost her balance and plunged headlong through the window, going down, down, down, through the dizzy distance to a terrible death!
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAIR DEAD FACE HE HAD LOVED SO WELL.
“My God, the girl will be instantly killed!” groaned Otho Maury, with blanched lips, and staggering like a drunken man as he reeled backwards to the door.
For even in the horror and remorse of the moment, knowing that he had caused Floy’s death as certainly as though he had plunged a dagger in her heart, a swift, prudential consideration restrained him from following his first impulse to rush to the window and watch the doomed girl’s terrible plunge to destruction.
“I must not be suspected of having caused her accident by my persecutions,” he thought, in alarm for his reputation.
A blind impulse of flight seized upon him, and, trembling with horror, his face ashen white, his evil black eyes staring blankly before him, he made his exit from the room and the house without encountering any one.
As he gained the street he heard a tumult of excited voices, but his guilty conscience would not permit him to join the crowd that was collecting on the pavement.
Wickedly as he had plotted against the poor girl’s happiness, he felt that he could not bear the sight of her poor mutilated body with all the sweet, saucy beauty crushed out of the poor dead face.
If it were Maybelle now, she would gloat over the sight in her joy that her beautiful rival was dead.