“I should be his equal now. No one would try to part us, and--we should be so happy!” she sobbed; and the bitter, bitter tears came in a burning shower. She buried her hot face in the pillow, shuddering, for a wild temptation had come to her--one from which she shrunk in terror. She murmured, faintly: “It is a terrible risk; but what matter? Life is not so sweet that one should greatly prize it, even if goaded to throw it away!” But she hid her face in her hands, and her slight frame shook as with a mortal chill. A vision had swept over her of the day when she had found her beautiful mother cold and dead--dead by her own hand--and how she, a weeping child, had been taken to the hearts of the good, kind old couple who had loved her so dearly. “If I died, there would be none to weep for me--none but dear Mrs. Banks,” she thought, piteously; and the terrible temptation to risk life for the sake of sordid gold overpowered the poor girl who had never realized till now the worldly value of the hard, yellow, shining metal. A yearning to be rich and grand like the Beresfords, to meet them on equal grounds, to give them scorn for scorn, to flaunt before their eyes the devotion of other lovers, overpowered the unhappy girl, who knew that there was one chance in a hundred of realizing these radiant dreams--one chance which she vowed to strive for despite the grim records of sixty years of her ill-fated race. It was August now, and ten years had passed since a victim had been immolated on the grim altar of the Moloch of Suicide Place. Would it claim another sacrifice, this insatiable monster? But a few months of the fatal year remained. “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” CHAPTER XLV. “HOPE DEFERRED MAKETH THE HEART SICK.” Ah, how slowly pass the days and weeks when parted from one we love! “Oh, absence is the night of love, Lovers are very children then, Fancy ten thousand feverish ills Till their loved one returns again!” Beresford knew all the meaning of the poet’s plaint as the slow days and nights dragged their weary lengths along without tidings of Floy. For, though a week had passed away, Landon had no encouraging news to give. The suspense began to tell on the weakened nerves of the impatient lover, and his improvement became less marked as hope and expectation became dulled in his heart. But in vain they urged him to desert the hot city for the cool breezes of Newport. “It would seem like deserting my darling. I can not go until I find her,” he answered, resolutely; and so the burning August days found them lingering still in the city, though the aristocratic avenue was deserted save for them. They would not leave him there to fret and grieve alone over his trouble. He was bitterly impatient over his lingering weakness that prevented him from taking an active part in the search for Floy.