There was something, too, in the nobleman’s fair, frank face, so debonair though so serious, that fascinated the younger man. Where had he seen such blue eyes before in the dim past? It came to him at last with a shock of mingled pain and pleasure. His new friend bore a subtile, haunting, charming likeness to his dead love Floy. And for this likeness St. George admired him all the more. By the time they reached New York, St. George was loath to part with his fascinating friend. He pressed him to become his guest. The reply startled him. “I shall be most happy to visit you later on, but for the present I am going to Mount Vernon, New York, where I have--friends.” It was a startling answer to St. George, who had also planned an early trip to Mount Vernon. Why he wished to go he hardly knew, except to revisit in silence and sorrow the places sacred to his brief, ill-fated love-dream. “As for the Maury’s, they need not know I am there. I shall not call, for I despise that scheming Maybelle,” he decided, remembering how falsely she had told Floy she was engaged to marry him. But he did not tell the nobleman that he also was soon to visit Mount Vernon. He parted from him with frank regret, expressing the hope that they might soon meet again. Then they went on shore, and there was Alva radiant with joy to meet them. She had come down in the carriage to meet them, and tears flashed into her bright eyes as she looked at her darling brother so pale, so changed, so sad. Her mother had written to her simply that her son’s love affair was ended forever, making no mention of the girl’s death, and Alva had been very indignant, saying to Floy: “Mamma has made him give up his love. I feared she would, but I hoped St. George would hold out against her arguments. I see how it is. He loves mamma so dearly--never son adored a mother so blindly--and she has made him think that the girl is unworthy of him.” Floy choked back a rising sob, and sat like a statue in her chair, fearing to breathe lest she betray her cruel secret. She was as proud as she was beautiful, this willful little Floy. In the long happy weeks since she had been here with Alva she had dreamed some happy dreams, but now they were all over. At first she had been glad to be here with her lover’s sister, and she had pictured to herself over and over his joy when he should come home and find her here an inmate of his home, a pet with his loved ones. Surely, then, it would be easy to win their liking for his chosen bride. But when Alva’s confidences showed Floy the overweening pride of the Beresfords, she began to be frightened even of charming Alva. She said to herself in weary nightly vigils: “She, too, is proud, although she pretends to take her brother’s part. I can see that she has little sympathy with unequal marriages. If she but guessed that I am the girl her brother loves, she would send me away from the shelter of this roof.”