She lighted her lamp, bathed her hot face, brushed out her tangled curls, then raised the window and looked down into the street at the motley crowds beneath the glaring lights. She was startled from a long reverie by the soft opening and closing of her door. Turning about with a cry of alarm, Floy saw Otho Maury standing with his back against the door, an insolent smile of triumph on his lips. “Floy, let me speak to you one moment,” he pleaded humbly. “No, I will not listen. How dare you come up here? Leave the room this instant, you villain!” she cried out in stormy anger. “By Heaven, I will not go, you pretty little vixen, till you hear me. Oh, Floy, I love you; I offer you my heart and protection! Will you accept them? No! Then I swear I’ll have the kiss you denied me that other night!” Maddened with passion for the scornful young beauty, he advanced toward her, and in her terrible fright at the thought of his loathed caress, she leaned her slight body far over the sill, and sent her voice ringing down to the street in agonized shrieks: “Help! help! help!” “Oh, horror! horror!” 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. But it was different with Otho, for deep in his heart burned a mad passion for bewitching Floy. Though he had plotted with his sister to destroy her, it was her soul _he_ meant to wreck, not her beautiful body. _That_ he worshiped with doting admiration, and had hoped to win.