“If you could only find her and put her out of the way,” she muttered, darkly.
“I will try,” he answered; and it was tacitly understood between them that the contest against Floy’s life and honor was to be waged more persistently than ever.
Let her but be found again, and Otho swore that he would make it impossible for her to marry Beresford.
Oh, it was cruel, shameful, wicked, this terrible warfare against a helpless orphan girl to whom life might otherwise have proved so bright and fair!
It was a wonder that peaceful sleep could visit the pillows of the two arch-plotters, Otho and Maybelle.
Yet the girl dreamed of a future wherein Floy should be swept from her path and Beresford won at last, while Otho—well, as for Otho, the future did not look so bright.
He loved Floy, and the plot against her, though he never swerved from it, planted thorns in his own heart.
So he took up the quest for the hapless little beauty, and when all inquiry failed in New York and Mount Vernon, he was obliged to consider himself baffled.
“I wish I had the powers of an amateur detective,” he thought, longingly; but he did not dare to employ one.
And he would have been startled if he had known that he was under the espionage of the best private detective in New York.