When Floy ran back to finish putting away the handkerchief boxes, several curious girls hastened to help her and to congratulate her on having made such a handsome sale to Mrs. Beresford. “She’s as rich as cream and peaches--her husband has so many millions he can’t count ’em,” declared one, rashly. “Her house is a marble palace on Fifth Avenue. We will go out with you to see it Sunday, if you like.” “Didn’t she make you a present for returning her purse?” queried another curious one. “Certainly not,” Floy answered, proudly. “She wouldn’t take it. I saw her push Mrs. Beresford’s purse back with so queenly an air that the lady stared with surprise,” laughed Nell Jarley. The girls all made great eyes of wonder, and one said that Floy should have taken the reward. Floy only listened, and smiled like one in a sweet waking dream. She was charmed with the gracious beauty of her lover’s mother, and she thought, with tender pride: “When I am his wife I will create as much sensation as she does when she comes here to shop.” And just then one of her mates said, carelessly: “With all that money, the Beresfords have only two children, a son and daughter, to inherit it.” “Is--is--the son married?” asked Floy, timidly; and they all laughed. “What a question! Are you thinking of setting your cap for him, princess! No, he is not married yet, though they do say he has fallen in love with Mr. Maury’s eldest daughter. She is very lovely and stylish, and comes here often. St. George Beresford comes here, too, with his mother now and then. He is perfectly splendid.” Floy wondered, with a throbbing heart, what they would say if they knew that she was betrothed to this grand Beresford. CHAPTER XVI. A CRUEL PERSECUTION. Floy went home that evening from the store with a blithe heart. The meeting with St. George Beresford’s mother had been a delight to the innocent girl. The great lady’s graciousness had thrilled her with hope. She remembered how anxiously her lover had admitted that he must conciliate his little world before his marriage. It seemed to her simple mind that Mrs. Beresford had been won over already. “She told me I was pretty--that she was looking at me as if I had been a picture; she can not be angry with her son for loving me,” she murmured, sagely, and she decided that if he should write her a letter from abroad she would answer it at once, telling him all that had happened since their parting and of her pleasant _rencontre_ with his charming mother. Dimpling with happy smiles, the fragment of a love-song on her rosy lips, Floy climbed the uncarpeted stairs to her own poor little den, away up under the eaves in the fourth story, where a minute later she was followed by her landlady, pudgy Mrs. Horton. The woman carried in her hand a beautiful bunch of roses and a letter. “These came for you awhile ago, Miss Fane,” she said, blandly. “From whom?” exclaimed Floy, in surprise.