She was alone in a large, gloomy bedroom of Suicide Place, for, as Otho had suspected, on hearing Maybelle’s story to-day, she was here in hiding from her foes. She had been most indiscreet in her adventure last night, but the longing to possess the letters Beresford had written to her overpowered every other impulse; so, trusting that Maybelle might take _her_ for a ghost, the brave little beauty made a determined onslaught and secured her own property, escaping undetected through the open window that looked upon an upper veranda wreathed in fragrant vines. “What a wretch she was to obtain my letters in that fashion! I am glad I thought of going to see the good carrier and finding out the truth, or I never should have had these sweet words to read!” cried Floy, kissing them again, as she had done dozens of times already to-day. In the falling twilight she sat at the upper window behind the lace curtain that screened her from view outside, and read and reread the precious trophies in artless delight, her heart throbbing fast with joy at each tender word. “What a fortunate girl I am to have won such a splendid lover!” she thought, with innocent pride and exultation, for her tender young heart yearned for love and care, she was so lonely. Floy did not realize all her great charms of mind and person, and in her lack of vanity she was always wondering how the splendid Beresford had chosen her so quickly for his heart’s queen out of a whole world full lovely girls. “I seek you--you alone I seek; All other women fair Or wise or good may go their way, Without my thought or care. “But you I follow day by day, And night by night I keep My heart’s chaste mansion lighted, where Your image lies asleep. “Asleep! If e’er to wake, He knows Who Eve to Adam brought, As you to me, the embodiment Of boyhood’s dear, sweet thought. “And youth’s fond dream, and manhood’s hope, That still half hopeless shone, Till every rootless, vain ideal Commingled into one-- “_You_, who are so diverse from me, And yet as much my own As this my soul, which formed a part, Dwells in its bodily throne. “I swear no oaths, I tell no lies, Nor boast I never knew A love dream--we all dream in youth-- But, _waking_, I found _you_-- “The real woman, whose first touch Aroused to highest life My real manhood. Crown it, then, Good angel, friend, love, wife!” “Oh, what lovely words and thoughts!” cried Floy, reading them again for the twentieth time; and she added, half in pity for cruel, jealous Maybelle: “How it must have stabbed her heart to read these tender words addressed to me! It must have been punishment enough for all her sin.” She was right; for what could be more cruel pain to a jealous, envious heart than to read those words of love to another?