Otho was a cur, indeed, but he was slight and dark and elegant--one of those types that very young girls rave over. Beresford saw that he stood high in Floy’s good graces, and began to hate him accordingly. When the couples paired off on the river-bank beneath the shady trees, there was Maybelle and Beresford, and next to them Floy and Otho. Floy was bright and restless, feeling Beresford’s gaze ever seeking hers, and wondering why it thrilled her so when she knew it was not right for him to look at any other than Maybelle, his beautiful, dark-eyed betrothed. She turned her back on him rather rudely, and exclaimed to Otho: “People are very foolish and superstitious. They are always going on about Suicide Place, and saying that it must claim another victim soon; and they are even hinting that I will be the doomed one.” “That is nonsense. I am sure you are too strong-minded to yield to such a temptation,” Otho replied, reassuringly. St. George could not help listening to the sound of the musical voice and watching the beautiful profile when it turned toward him in her animated talk. Heavens, how lovely she was! What eyes, what lips, what dimples, what a mesh of curly, golden hair in which to entangle a man’s throbbing heart! And yet it was not simply her beauty that inthralled him, and he knew it. She had that psychical charm we call personal magnetism, that is like the perfume to the flower and seems to endow it with a soul. He heard her continue, almost defiantly, as if annoyed: “I wish they would not talk about it, for it makes me angry. Why should I kill myself? I’m young and gay, and, in a way, happy! And yet,” musingly, “I suppose, after all, that the terrible taint of that mania is in my blood. I am not superstitious, but perhaps it may conquer me after all, who knows? Do you suppose I shall ever kill myself?” “I hope not. You would break a dozen hearts if you did, mine among the rest,” Otho replied, banteringly, with a killing glance. She continued, meditatively: “They will go on expecting me to commit suicide, of course, and always selecting the old farm as the scene of the fifth tragedy. Why should I not choose some other scene for the final act? This river, say,” pointing to it as it rippled below the bank, dark and deep and dangerous in its beauty. Laughing, she rose to her feet, and he said: “It seems that fate always demands the sacrifice within the gates of the grim old place.” “Do you think so? Well, I shall defy the fate to which I was born, and break the charm of Suicide Place. If, following the taint in my blood, I must indeed kill myself, I shall disappoint everybody in the location. It shall not be at the old farm, but--_here_!” Then all at once the startling tragedy happened.