Title: Love Conquers Pride: or, Where Peace Dwelt
Author: Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
Language: English
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       *       *       *       *       *

NEW EAGLE SERIES No. 1164

LOVE CONQUERS PRIDE

_BY MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER_

[Illustration]

       *       *       *       *       *

POPULAR COPYRIGHTS

New Eagle Series

PRICE, FIFTEEN CENTS

Carefully Selected Love Stories

_Note the Authors!_

There is such a profusion of good books in this list, that it is an
impossibility to urge you to select any particular title or author’s
work. All that we can say is that any line that contains the complete
works of Mrs. Georgie Sheldon, Charles Garvice, Mrs. Harriet Lewis,
May Agnes Fleming, Wenona Gilman, Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, and other
writers of the same type, is worthy of your attention, especially when
the price has been set at 15 cents the volume.

These books range from 256 to 320 pages. They are printed from good
type, and are readable from start to finish.

If you are looking for clean-cut, honest value, then we state most
emphatically that you will find it in this line.

_ALL TITLES ALWAYS IN PRINT_

    1--Queen Bess                       By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
    2--Ruby’s Reward                    By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
    7--Two Keys                         By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
    9--The Virginia Heiress                By May Agnes Fleming
   12--Edrie’s Legacy                   By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
   17--Leslie’s Loyalty                      By Charles Garvice
         (His Love So True)
   22--Elaine                                By Charles Garvice
   24--A Wasted Love                         By Charles Garvice
         (On Love’s Altar)
   41--Her Heart’s Desire                    By Charles Garvice
         (An Innocent Girl)
   44--That Dowdy                       By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
   50--Her Ransom                            By Charles Garvice
         (Paid For)
   55--Thrice Wedded                    By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
   66--Witch Hazel                      By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
   70--Sydney                                By Charles Garvice
         (A Wilful Young Woman)
   73--The Marquis                           By Charles Garvice
   77--Tina                             By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
   79--Out of the Past                       By Charles Garvice
         (Marjorie)
   84--Imogene                               By Charles Garvice
         (Dumaresq’s Temptation)
   85--Lorrie; or, Hollow Gold               By Charles Garvice
   88--Virgie’s Inheritance             By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
   95--A Wilful Maid                         By Charles Garvice
         (Philippa)
   98--Claire                                 By Charles Garvice
         (The Mistress of Court Regna)
   99--Audrey’s Recompense              By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  102--Sweet Cymbeline                       By Charles Garvice
         (Bellmaire)
  109--Signa’s Sweetheart                    By Charles Garvice
         (Lord Delamere’s Bride)
  111--Faithful Shirley                 By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  117--She Loved Him                         By Charles Garvice
  119--’Twixt Smile and Tear                 By Charles Garvice
         (Dulcie)
  122--Grazia’s Mistake                 By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  130--A Passion Flower                      By Charles Garvice
         (Madge)
  133--Max                              By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  136--The Unseen Bridegroom               By May Agnes Fleming
  138--A Fatal Wooing                      By Laura Jean Libbey
  141--Lady Evelyn                         By May Agnes Fleming
  144--Dorothy’s Jewels                 By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  146--Magdalen’s Vow                      By May Agnes Fleming
  151--The Heiress of Glen Gower           By May Agnes Fleming
  155--Nameless Dell                    By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  157--Who Wins                            By May Agnes Fleming
  166--The Masked Bridal                By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  168--Thrice Lost, Thrice Won             By May Agnes Fleming
  174--His Guardian Angel                    By Charles Garvice
  177--A True Aristocrat                By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  181--The Baronet’s Bride                 By May Agnes Fleming
  188--Dorothy Arnold’s Escape          By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  199--Geoffrey’s Victory               By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  203--Only One Love                         By Charles Garvice
  210--Wild Oats                        By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  213--The Heiress of Egremont            By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
  215--Only a Girl’s Love                    By Charles Garvice
  219--Lost: A Pearle                   By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  222--The Lily of Mordaunt             By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  223--Leola Dale’s Fortune                  By Charles Garvice
  231--The Earl’s Heir                       By Charles Garvice
         (Lady Norah)
  233--Nora                             By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
  236--Her Humble Lover                      By Charles Garvice
         (The Usurper; or, The Gipsy Peer)
  242--A Wounded Heart                       By Charles Garvice
         (Sweet as a Rose)
  244--A Hoiden’s Conquest              By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon



Love Conquers Pride


  OR,
  WHERE PEACE DWELT

  BY
  MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER

  Author of “The Man She Hated,” “A Married Flirt,” “Loyal
  Unto Death,” “Only a Kiss”--published in the NEW EAGLE
  SERIES.

  [Illustration]

  STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
  PUBLISHERS
  79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

       *       *       *       *       *

  Copyright, 1888

  NORMAN L. MUNRO
  Renewal for 28 years, from
  November 8, 1916, granted
  to Mrs. Alex. McVeigh
  Miller

  Love Conquers Pride

(Printed in the United States of America)

       *       *       *       *       *

LOVE CONQUERS PRIDE.



CHAPTER I. A PRETTY FACTORY GIRL.


Pretty Pansy lay lazily in the hammock at the foot of the lawn, and
listened to the south wind rushing through the tree tops overhead,
thinking to herself, with a blush, that it seemed to be whispering a
name--whispering it over and over:

“Norman Wylde!”

At the top of the green, sloping lawn stood a big white farmhouse,
with long porches shaded by rose vines and honeysuckles. Pansy’s uncle
and aunt lived there, and she had come on a month’s visit to them. The
month was slipping away very fast now, and she must soon return to
her work in Richmond, for Pansy Laurens was no pampered favorite of
fortune, but an employee of one of the great tobacco factories.

Pansy was only fifteen when her father, a machinist at the Tredegar
Works, had died and left his wife and five children penniless, save for
what they could earn by the labor of their own hands. Pansy was the
eldest, and her mother had to take her from school that the labor of
her little white hands might help to earn the family support.

Nothing offered but the tobacco factories, and Pansy went there, while
her brother Willie found work as a cash boy in a dry-goods store on
Broad Street. The three younger ones, being too small to work, were
continued at school, while the mother took in sewing to help eke out
the family income.

It was hard on them all, most especially on Pansy, who was so
intelligent and refined, and who hated to leave school and toil at
repulsive tasks among companions who were mostly uncongenial, for,
although some of the girls were sweet and pretty as herself, others
were coarse and rude, and sneered at her, calling her proud and
ambitious, although they knew at heart that they were only jealous of
the lovely face, so round and dimpled, with its big purplish-blue eyes,
shaded by such a beautiful fringe of long black curling lashes.

They all envied her that fair face and those silky masses of wavy dark
hair that made such a becoming frame for the transparent white skin,
with its wild-rose tints and delicate tracery of blue veins.

But, pretty or ugly, it did not matter, the girl said to herself
sometimes, with bitter discontent, as she looked at her fair reflection
in the mirror. She was nothing but a factory girl, after all, and there
were people who looked down on her for that act as if the very sound
were the essence of vulgarity. To have been a shopgirl even, or a
dressmaker, or milliner, would have been far more genteel, she said to
herself.

This was the first time in three years that she had got away from the
factory, and she would not have done so then if she had not been given
a furlough from work because there was a temporary dullness in trade.

Then Uncle Robbins had come to Richmond from his country home on a
little business, and, struck by her pale cheeks and air of languor,
invited her to go home with him. Mother urged her to accept the
invitation, declaring that she could get along without her, and Pansy
went gladly away on her little summer holiday, which was now drawing to
an end.

Her heart was full of this as she swung to and fro in the hammock
beneath the trees, and listened to the wind rustling the leaves so
musically, seeming to murmur over and over that name so dear to her
heart:

“Norman Wylde!”

He was a summer boarder at her aunt’s, and he had been kind to her, not
cool and supercilious like the others, who looked down upon her because
she was a working girl.

Pansy thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen, and she was
grateful to him for the courteous way in which he treated her, never
seeming to realize any difference in the social position of herself and
Miss Ives, the Richmond belle, who was here with her mother because
the doctors had tabooed any gayety for the elderly lady this summer on
account of a serious heart trouble.

Juliette Ives was as much in love with the handsome young gentleman as
Pansy herself, and she sneered at the factory girl in her cheap lawns
and ginghams.

“Actually setting herself up as an equal among her aunt’s boarders,”
she said disdainfully. “I mean to put her down at once, and let her
know that we do not desire her company.”

So she boldly asked Pansy if she could hire her to do the washing for
her mother and herself.

“I am not a servant,” Pansy answered, flushing angrily.

“You are a factory girl, aren’t you?” disdainfully.

“Yes, but not a servant.”

“I don’t see much difference,” said the rich girl insolently; and from
that moment the two were open enemies.

Juliette Ives knew in her own heart that her spiteful actions had
been the outcome of jealousy because Norman Wylde had looked so
admiringly at Pansy when he first met her, and Pansy was quick enough
to understand the truth.

“She is in love with him, and is jealous of me, in spite of my poverty
and my lonely position. Very well, I’ll pay her back for her scorn, if
I can,” she resolved, with girlish pique.

And as she possessed beauty equal to, if not greater than, Juliette’s
blond charms, and was fairly well educated and intelligent, she had
some advantages, at least, with which to enter the lists with the
aristocratic belle who scorned her so openly.

And Norman Wylde, who had a noble, chivalrous nature, could not help
taking Pansy’s part when he saw how the boarders tried to put her down.

“Poor little thing! It’s a shame, for she is as sweet and pretty as a
wild rose, and they ought to be friendly with her and help to brighten
her hard lot,” he thought, with indignation.



CHAPTER II. LOVE ALL HIS OWN.


The boarders had organized a fishing party, and everybody had gone,
even Mr. Wylde, so it was very quiet at the farmhouse. Aunt Robbins and
her servants were busy making preserves, and Uncle Robbins was in the
meadow, hauling and stacking the wheat he had cut a few days before.
Pansy had helped to peel apples for the preserves until her back ached
and her hands smarted, so at last Aunt Robbins sent her out to rest.

“I shan’t need you any more to-day, so you had better go and take a nap
in the hammock before that stuck-up Jule Ives comes to turn you out of
it,” said the good woman.

Pansy went out, but she took off her calico dress and gingham apron
first, and donned her prettiest dress, an organdie lawn with a white
ground sprigged with blue flowers. A pretty bow of blue ribbon fastened
the white lace at her throat, and another one tied back the mass
of rippling dark hair from the white temples, leaving just a few
bewitching love locks to curl over the white brow. Thus attired, she
looked exquisitely fair, cool, and charming, and she knew well that
when the boarders returned, tired and hot from the day’s amusements,
they would envy her sweet, comfortable appearance.

She was not disappointed, for by and by, when they came trooping
through the big white gate close by her, every one stopped and stared,
and Miss Ives exclaimed, in a loud, sarcastic voice:

“Good gracious, is it Sunday?”

“Why, no, of course not, Juliette,” said Chattie Norwood. “Why, what
made you think of such a funny thing?”

“Why, Pansy Laurens has on her Sunday dress, that’s all,” with a loud
laugh.

“Oh, pshaw! Her other one is in the washtub,” tittered Miss Norwood,
and every word came distinctly to Pansy’s ears. An angry impulse
prompted her to make some scathing reply, but an innate delicacy
restrained her, and she would not lift her beautiful, drooping lashes
from the book she pretended to be reading, although the angry color
deepened to crimson on her cheeks.

The tittering party passed on toward the house, but, although Pansy
did not look up, she was conscious that one had lingered and stopped.
It was Norman Wylde, and he came up to the hammock, and said gently:

“Poor little Pansy!”

Her sweet lips quivered, and she looked up, meeting the tender,
sympathetic gaze of his splendid dark eyes.

“You are a brave little girl,” he continued warmly. “I was glad that
you proved yourself too much of a lady to reply to their coarse sneers.
Your sweet dignity makes me love you all the more.”

Pansy gave a little start of surprise and rapture. Did he indeed love
her? The color flamed up brightly on her delicate cheeks, and the
lashes drooped bashfully over her eyes.

“Look at me, Pansy,” said the young man, in a tone made up of tender
command and fond entreaty. “You are not surprised. You guessed that I
loved you, didn’t you?”

“No. I was afraid that--that you loved Miss Ives,” she faltered, and a
frown darkened his handsome face.

“Do not speak to me of her,” he said impatiently. “Who could love her
after the meanness and injustice of her conduct to you?” He imprisoned
both her little hands in his, as he continued ardently: “Pansy, do you
love me, my little darling?”

A bashful glance from the sweet blue eyes answered his question, and,
stooping down, he was about to press a kiss on her beautiful lips when
a stealthy footstep came up behind them, and an angry voice exclaimed:

“Really, Mr. Wylde, when you want to flirt with factory girls you
should not choose such a public place, especially when the girl you are
engaged to is close at hand.”

He started backward as if shot, and Pansy sprang from the hammock with
a shriek:

“It is false!”

Juliette Ives laughed scornfully, and replied:

“Ask him. He will not deny it.”

Pretty Pansy, with a face that had grown white as a lily, turned to
Norman Wylde.

“Is it true? Are you engaged to her?” she demanded sharply.

“Yes, but----”

“That is enough!” interrupted Pansy, with flashing eyes. She would
not let him finish his sentence, so keen was her resentment at his
trifling, as she deemed it; and, looking scornfully at him, she said:

“Never presume to speak to me again, sir!”

Then she walked rapidly from the spot, and Norman Wylde and Juliette
Ives stood looking at each other with angry eyes.

“Are you not ashamed of yourself?” she cried indignantly.

“Eavesdropper!” he retorted passionately, forgetting his
gentlemanliness in his resentment at her conduct.

“Traitor!” she retorted defiantly, then burst out fiercely: “Call me
what names you will, I have borne your trifling until I could bear no
more. If you wanted to flirt, why couldn’t you have chosen some one in
your own station in life, instead of that miserable tobacco-factory
girl?”

He had folded his arms across his chest, and was listening with a sneer
to her angry speech. When she paused he answered, in a low yet distinct
voice:

“I beg your pardon. It was not flirting, but earnest.”

A sharp remonstrance sprang to her lips, but, without taking any note
of it, he continued coldly:

“I had a fancy for you once, Juliette, but it perished when I saw how
mean and base you could be to a less fortunate sister woman. I have
watched you and your clique, Juliette, and I have been ashamed of
you all--ashamed and indignant, and my heart turned away from you to
that sweet persecuted girl with a deeper tenderness than it ever felt
before. I made up my mind to snap the bonds that held me as your slave,
and to win her for my own. But I acted prematurely in declaring my love
for her first. You drove me to it with your unwomanly conduct of a
little while ago, else I had not been so hasty.”

She stood staring at him with angry incredulity, wondering if he spoke
the truth, if he really meant to throw her over for the sake of a girl
he had barely known a month.

“What if I refuse to give you your freedom?” she asked harshly.’

“You would not wish to hold an unwilling captive,” he replied, with
a touch of scorn, and she saw that it would be impossible to hold him
without a sacrifice of her pride. Curbing herself a little, she asked
humbly:

“Hadn’t we better take time to think it over, Norman? I admit I was
jealous and a little hasty.”

He looked disappointed and uneasy. Was she really going to hold him to
that bond of which he was so weary, against which he chafed so fiercely?

She caught that look, and comprehended it with bitter mortification.
Anger came to her aid. “Go--you are free as air, and I am well rid of a
fickle flirt,” she exclaimed hotly.

“I thank you, Miss Ives,” he replied, in a tone of relief, and, bowing
coldly, he walked away toward the house, leaving Juliette stamping on
the soft grass in a tempest of fury and disappointment.

He was anxious to find little Pansy and explain his conduct to her.
Surely she would forgive him when she knew that it was for her sake he
had broken faith with Juliette Ives. Of course she would be ready to
make up with him.

And his heart throbbed madly at the thought that sweet Pansy’s love
was all his own. He knew that there would be a bitter battle with his
relatives, but he was determined to make her his wife.



CHAPTER III. A JEALOUS RAGE.


Juliette Ives rushed up to the house presently and poured the story of
her lover’s treachery into the ears of her mother, who became quite
indignant at the turn affairs were taking.

“I will go at once to the farmer’s wife, and give her a piece of my
mind about her impudent niece,” she said, and she went immediately
to Mrs. Robbins, who was in the pantry, labeling the nice jars of
preserves she had made that day.

“I have come to complain of your niece, that bold factory girl, who has
been making trouble between my daughter and the gentleman she’s engaged
to,” she began.

Mrs. Robbins looked around in amazement.

“What has Pansy done, ma’am, to be called sech names?” she exclaimed,
rather resentfully; and then Mrs. Ives poured out a garbled version of
poor Pansy’s flirtation with Norman Wylde, making it appear that she
was a bold, forward creature, who had actually forced the gentleman to
pay her attention.

“Maybe she thinks he will marry her and make her a fine lady, but she’s
mistaken,” she sneered. “It’s only a way he has of flirting, but it
means nothing, as many a poor girl in Richmond and elsewhere knows
to her cost. He’s very wild, but he promised my daughter, when she
accepted him, that he would reform. I believe he was trying to do so,
but when Pansy Laurens kept throwing herself in his way he couldn’t
resist the temptation to make a fool of her. So when my daughter caught
him kissing the girl, just now, in the hammock, she discarded him at
once, and he’s so angry he’ll maybe fall into some mischief that will
make Pansy Laurens rue the day she ever saw him. If I were you, Mrs.
Robbins, I’d send the girl home to her mother at once,” she advised
eagerly.

Mrs. Robbins sat silent, gravely cogitating. She was a large, fleshy
woman, good-natured, and slow to anger. It did not occur to her to fly
into a passion and resent Mrs. Ives’ harsh opinion of Pansy.

On the contrary, to her calm, equable nature, it seemed best to weigh
the pros and cons in the case. Besides, Pansy was her husband’s niece,
not hers, and she had no special fondness for the girl, whom she had
never seen till this summer.

Mrs. Ives watched her closely, and, seeing how quietly she had taken
everything, took heart to continue pouring out her venom.

“I’m afraid that girl is going to make you lots of trouble,” she
ventured. “She will want to hang on to Mr. Wylde, of course.”

Mrs. Robbins turned her large, ruminating eyes on the lady’s face, and
remarked:

“Perhaps he means fair. Rich men have married poor geerls before now.
And Pansy Laurens is a good-looking geerl--as pritty as your Jule, I
think, ma’am.”

Mrs. Ives grew quite red in the face with anger, but she restrained
herself, hoping to mold the simple-minded woman to her will. Shaking
her head vehemently, she replied:

“Ah, you don’t know the Wyldes! They are the proudest people in
Richmond, rich and fashionable, and belong to one of the oldest
families in Virginia. All of them have been professional men, and
they consider working people as no better than their servants. If
Norman Wylde was fool enough to want to marry a mechanic’s daughter
and a working girl, which you may be sure he isn’t, his folks would
disinherit him, and never speak to him again.”

Mrs. Robbins shook her head and sighed.

“I hate to think of my husband’s niece a-being in sech a scrape. Ef
she’s been bold and forrard, ma’am, I never noticed it.”

“Of course not. She was too sly,” sneered Mrs. Ives. “But I see you’re
bound to take her part, Mrs. Robbins, and I’ll say no more, only this:
If disgrace comes on your family through that audacious piece, remember
I warned you.”

“I’ll talk to Mr. Robbins,” was the only answer from the woman of few
words.



CHAPTER IV. THE BIRD FLIES.


Meanwhile poor Pansy, half crazed with shame and grief, was sobbing
forlornly up in her little chamber under the eaves.

She believed that Norman Wylde had been amusing himself with her, and
the thought was agony to her fond, loving heart.

“I loved him so! Oh, I loved him so! And it was cruel, cruel for him
to deceive me,” she moaned bitterly, while the shame of it all weighed
heavily on her sensitive spirit.

Suddenly the hired girl, a bright mulatto, put her head into the room,
and started at seeing Pansy lying on the floor in tears.

“Lor’, Miss Pansy, what’s de matter? You sick?” she exclaimed.

“No--yes. What do you want, Sue?” fretfully.

“Mr. Wylde tole me to tole you to come downsta’rs. He wants to tell you
sumfin.”

Pansy’s blue eyes flashed through their tears.

“Tell him I won’t come, that I don’t want to see him!” she replied
spiritedly.

Norman Wylde sighed when he received the message, and turned away
without a word. Going to his room, he dashed off a hasty letter to
Pansy, explaining everything, and begged her consent to become his
wife. Then he went down, and, finding Sue alone in the kitchen, gave
her the letter to take to Pansy, liberally rewarding her for the
service.

Just outside Pansy’s door she came upon Juliette Ives, who said
carelessly:

“Give me that letter. I’ll hand it to Pansy.”

She held up her hand, with a silver piece shining in its palm. Sue
snapped at the bait, and immediately delivered up the precious letter,
which Miss Ives hid in her pocket, then ran away to her own room.

Her pale-blue eyes sparkled with fury as she read the tender love
letter Norman Wylde had written to Pansy.

“She shall never be his wife if I can prevent it!” she vowed bitterly.

The impatient lover waited in vain for a reply to his letter, for Pansy
did not come down that evening, and when he arose, very early the next
morning, he learned, to his dismay, that Farmer Robbins had taken his
niece away on the midnight train.

He went impatiently to Mrs. Robbins, and she told him, in her cool,
straightforward way, that Mr. Robbins had taken Pansy away because he
did not approve of her flirting with young men.

“But, my dear madam, my intentions were strictly honorable. I wished to
marry Pansy,” he expostulated.

“You are engaged to Miss Ives, ain’t you?” she returned curtly.

“I was, but I am no longer. I broke off with her that I might ask Pansy
Laurens to marry me.”

He seemed so manly and straightforward that Mrs. Robbins must have
been forced to believe in his sincerity had not her mind been poisoned
beforehand by the slanders of Mrs. Ives. But the poison had done its
work, and she looked on him as a liar and a libertine. So she answered
curtly again:

“Rich young men like you, Mr. Wylde, don’t marry poor working geerls
like little Pansy Laurens. I’ve heerd all about your character from
Mrs. Ives, sir, and I know you didn’t mean any good to Pansy, so her
uncle up and took her away out o’ harm’s reach.”

His black eyes flashed with anger.

“I shall follow her!” he exclaimed hotly, and rushed out on the lawn,
where Mrs. Ives was leisurely promenading under the trees.

She cowered a little when she saw his handsome face so pale with anger,
and his burning dark eyes fixed on her with such resentful passion.

Controlling his fierce anger by a strong effort of will, he advanced
toward her, and said, with forced calmness:

“I am curious to know, Mrs. Ives, what kind of character you have
given me to Mrs. Robbins, since it had the effect of incensing her so
bitterly against me?”

She tossed up her head defiantly, and replied:

“It was your flirting with her niece that angered Mrs. Robbins.”

His brow darkened, and he waved his hand, as if thrusting aside her
petty subterfuge.

“Mrs. Robbins told me that she had had my character from you.”

“Oh, pshaw! What was the foolish creature thinking of?” cried the
lady airily. “She asked me about you, and I merely said that you were
fickle-minded--that was all. You will grant that I had room to say that
much, after your treatment of my daughter?”

He recoiled from the envenomed thrust, and turned away, with a cold
bow. He felt sure that she had said much more, but she was not a
man--he could not force her to answer for the slanders she had uttered
against him.

As he left her side, Juliette approached eagerly, and inquired what
Norman had said. Mrs. Ives repeated it, and added, with a chuckle of
triumph:

“He did not believe me, but he dared not say so.”

“Have you written to the Wyldes, mamma?”

“Yes; and colored the whole affair as highly as possible.”

“You do not believe they will allow him to marry that upstart girl?”

“No, indeed; for I have given her a fine character, you may be sure,”
replied the heartless woman complacently.

“I should die of spite if he married her,” cried Juliette jealously.

“He will not marry her, my dear, for I am determined to thwart her, if
possible. I have poisoned the minds of all her relations against him,
and they will be sure to keep him at a distance. Besides, you said
yourself that she was angry with him, and declared she would never
speak to him again.”

“Yes; but if he had a chance to explain----”

“They will have no chance to explain. Their relations will keep them
apart,” interrupted her mother firmly.



CHAPTER V. THE LOVER REAPPEARS.


Arnell & Grey, the firm at whose immense tobacco factory Pansy
Laurens worked, were noted for their kindness and liberality to their
employees. Every year they planned and carried out, at their own
expense, some pleasant entertainment, to which every one in the factory
was cordially invited; and this summer it took the form of a delightful
excursion.

A crowded steamer carried the large number of employees down the James
River, and a fine band furnished music for the gay young people, who
danced all day upon the deck, under the blue sky and bright sunlight of
August. Downstairs a dinner was waiting, and nothing that could conduce
to the pleasure of the occasion had been forgotten by Arnell & Grey,
who delighted in the success of their generous undertakings.

Pansy Laurens went, of course--naughty Pansy, who had been in disgrace
for a month with her relations, on account of her crime of stealing a
rich girl’s lover away. Yes, it was almost five weeks now since Uncle
Robbins had taken Pansy back to Richmond and told her mother sternly
that he was sorry he had ever taken her away, since she had made
serious trouble among his boarders, and flirted boldly with a young man
who was engaged to another girl.

He had brought her home to get her out of harm’s way, he said, and he
advised his sister to keep a sharp lookout upon the willful girl, as
Norman Wylde had vowed he would follow her to Richmond.

Mrs. Laurens expressed herself to her brother as being ashamed of her
daughter’s bad conduct, and determined to keep her in strict bounds
hereafter.

She scolded Pansy, and threatened to lock her in her room on bread and
water if she ever spoke to that dangerous young man again.

Poor Pansy could do nothing but tell her own side of the story.

She had not been bold and forward. She had not known Norman Wylde was
engaged to anybody, and she did not know that he was amusing himself
only, when he made love to her in those bright summer days. When she
found out that he was only flirting she had told him never to speak to
her again.

“Stick to that, little gal, and there won’t be no more trouble,” said
Uncle Robbins approvingly.

“Yes; don’t let him come near you again as long as you live,” added
Mrs. Robbins sharply, and Pansy thought to herself that she never would.

She was overwhelmed with shame and grief at this pitiless exposé of
her futile love dream, and down in her little heart was a secret
resentment, too, at the hardness of everybody. Why should they declare
that she had been bold and forward? She knew that it was untrue, and
their blame cut deep into the sensitive heart. Norman Wylde, too--how
could he have been so cruel, so unkind? Her pillow was wet with tears
every night as she strove through long, sleepless hours to banish from
memory the false, sweet smiles and loving dark eyes that haunted her
and made so hard the bitter task she was essaying.

She was not among the dancers to-day, although she was the prettiest
girl on board, and had many invitations from gallant young men. But
she chose rather to sit leaning pensively over the handrail and gaze
with grave blue eyes into the foamy depths of the water. Many eyes
wandered to the pretty figure in the snowy-white dress and wide,
daisy-trimmed straw hat; many wondered why she seemed so sad, but none
guessed that she was thinking that she would like to be at rest under
those softly lapping waves, with the story of her young life ended here
and now.

Ah, how suddenly her despondent mood was changed! A shadow came between
her and the light--some one sat down beside her and facing her. She
looked up, startled, and saw--Norman Wylde.

Norman Wylde, pale and impassioned-looking, with a determined light in
his splendid dark eyes.

As she made a movement to rise, his strong hand closed over her weak
little white ones, and forced her back into her seat.

“Sit still,” he whispered hoarsely, desperately. “I must speak to you,
and you shall listen.”

She glanced about her with frightened eyes. No one was looking. The
music was pulsing sweetly on the air, and the dancers were keeping
time with flying feet. She looked up at him, pale with emotion.

“You can have nothing to say to me that I wish to hear, Mr. Wylde, for
I despise you,” she answered bitterly.

“That is not true, Pansy, for a month ago you owned that you loved me,
and you have not unlearned your love so soon. Falsehoods have been told
you, and you knew no better than to believe them without giving me a
chance to defend myself. I have written to you, but my letters came
back to me unopened. I have dogged your footsteps on the streets, but
you fled from me, and, as a last resort, I came upon this excursion,
determined to force a hearing from you. Will you listen to me? Will you
let me explain the meaning of that scene with Juliette Ives that day?”

She struggled under his detaining hand, anxious to escape, yet not
wishing to make a scene.

“You were engaged to her, yet you made love to me; that is enough for
me to know,” she answered, turning crimson in her humiliation; but her
indifference and eagerness to get away only made him more determined to
conquer her pride.

“Pansy, you are driving me mad,” he cried imploringly; then, with
sudden passion, he added: “Unless you will sit still and listen to what
I have to say to you, I swear I will drown myself before your eyes!”



CHAPTER VI. A HAPPY EXCURSION.


Pansy was so startled by the threat of her desperate lover that she
sank back into her seat without a word, her slight form trembling with
terror. She certainly did not want him to drown himself, although he
had treated her so cruelly.

So she consented to listen to him. There could be no great harm in
that, for it would not alter her opinion of him at all. He had been
false to Juliette Ives and false to her. She was quite sure that she
despised him, although her heart was beating furiously as she looked
up into the pale, impassioned face, with its eager, burning dark eyes,
that seemed fairly to devour her white, startled young face.

Now that he had his chance, he improved it in eloquent fashion. He
explained everything clearly, making her understand that he was not the
villain they made him out, and that if he were to blame in any way it
was for breaking loose from the bonds that held him to a girl whose
selfishness and cruelty had changed his love to hate.

“If I ever really loved her, which seems doubtful to me now,” he said.
“It was last winter that we became engaged, and, although I admired
her fair face and enjoyed her society, I swear to you, Pansy, that the
thought of marrying her never crossed my mind until one night in the
conservatory, when I was, somehow, drawn into asking her to marry me.
I hardly know how it was, unless it was the romance of the moment. You
remember the lines:

  “Azure eyes, golden hair, scented robes--

“They had crazed my hot, foolish brain then.

  “Ah, the silliest woman can make
  A fool of the wisest of men!”

“But they say that you are fickle,” murmured Pansy, speaking for the
first time.

“It is not true, my little darling. I never really fell in love until
your sweet face dawned on my vision. Then I began to realize that my
engagement to Juliette was a terrible mistake, and that I would be
wrong to continue it. But I kept waiting from day to day, hoping she
would see how things were and throw me over herself, as she did at
last, but only after I had bungled matters by telling you too soon of
my love.”

Where was Pansy’s bitter resentment now? It was melting like snow in
the sunshine under his eager words. Everything looked so different now
in the light of his manly, straightforward explanations.

Her sad heart bounded with renewed hope, and a leaden weight seemed to
be lifted from her spirits.

“Now, Pansy, you see that I was not to blame,” said her lover eagerly.
“You will forgive me, will you not, and promise what I was going to ask
you that day--that you will be my own little wife?”

She blushed brightly, and could not utter a word. He took her little
hand tenderly in his, and whispered:

“‘Silence gives consent.’”

Presently she lifted her little head from his breast, where he had
drawn it in reckless defiance of the whole world, if it had been
looking on. But, fortunately, no one saw or heeded the pair of happy
lovers.

“But how can I be your wife?” she whispered, in a troubled tone. “Mrs.
Ives told Aunt Robbins that your family was very rich and grand--that
they would never permit you to marry me.”

“Never mind, I will bring them around,” he replied, with pretended
carelessness.

He would not tell her that he had spoken to his parents about her, and
that both had sternly forbidden him to think of marrying one so far
beneath him in position, birth, and fortune.

“Remember that you are descended from one of the first families of
Virginia,” exclaimed his haughty mother.

“I shall only regret that fact if it is to separate me from the girl
I love,” he replied angrily, and then his father threatened him with
disinheritance if he did not give up Pansy Laurens. He told Pansy
nothing of all this, although it lay deep in his own heart, like a
leaden weight, for he knew that he could not support a wife if his
father threw him over. He had no fortune of his own, and, although he
had been educated for the law, he had only just hung out his “shingle,”
as he humorously called it. It was folly, madness, to woo Pansy
Laurens in the face of such prospects, and yet he went straight on,
hoping against hope that something would turn up in his favor.

“I will bring them around in time,” he repeated, and she, looking up at
her splendid lover in worshipful adoration, believed him, and bright
visions of happiness flitted before her mind’s eye. She could not help
triumphing in her thoughts over her insolent rival, Juliette Ives.

Oh, how suddenly the face of all the world was changed to the girl who
such a little while ago was so unhappy that she wished herself dead!
The beautiful face grew so animated that he was charmed and delighted.
He told her that she had the fairest face he had ever seen, and that he
would like to be a king, that he might make her a queen.

All too soon that happy excursion came to an end, but it stood out
brightly forever in Pansy’s memory. She had been so happy, so blessed;
and when she parted with her lover it was to look forward to secret
meetings--pleasant walks with him that would take away the dreariness
and loneliness of her life. He told her that it would not be wrong,
and she loved him too well to doubt his word.

Several weeks afterward Pansy’s mother was quite sick one day with a
headache, and the girl had to stay home from work. Toward afternoon she
grew much better, and then Pansy, who was sitting near the bed with her
sewing, said timidly:

“Mamma, I am afraid that we have all been too hard on Norman Wylde.
Perhaps he did love me and mean to marry me.”

“Nonsense!” the mother exclaimed curtly, and then she saw tears in
Pansy’s blue eyes, much to her dismay, for she thought Pansy had got
over her fancy for Norman Wylde.

“But, mamma----”

“I do not wish to hear anything about that villain,” answered the
mother sharply, and, although the girl had made up her mind to
confess everything to her mother, she was frightened out of it by her
harshness; and the next time she saw Norman she told him that she had
made the effort to tell her mother all, but had failed through dread of
her anger.

They were in the Capitol Square, for it was Sunday afternoon, and
Pansy had told her mother that she was going for a little walk.

Norman Wylde was waiting for her under the tree in a secluded part of
the grounds, and they sat down together on a rustic bench while Pansy,
half in tears, related her failure with her mother.

“I am sorry, for I have wished so much that I might be able to visit
you at your own home,” said her lover. Then his face brightened, and he
added:

“But never mind, darling, it does not matter so much now, for I am
going away from Richmond very soon. Do not look so woebegone, my little
Pansy, for I have good news for you.”

She started and looked up eagerly, wondering if his parents had
relented.

But it was nothing like that.

In a moment he continued:

“Congratulate me, my dearest. I have at last found a client!”

“Oh!” cried Pansy gladly.

“Yes, and a wealthy one, too,” said the young man exultantly. “He
wishes me to go to London upon some law business for him, and if my
mission proves successful my reputation will be made at once, and I
shall earn a princely fee, also.”

“But to go away so far--oh!” cried Pansy, in unutterable distress.

But her lover laughed.

“Pshaw! Not so very far,” he said lightly, then, pressing her little
hand warmly, he whispered: “We can bear the separation, my darling,
since, in reality, it only brings us nearer together, as, of course I
shall be in a position to marry then.”

But Pansy had burst into tears. A dark cloud had settled over her
spirits.

No one was near them, and he bent tenderly over her, trying to soothe
her girlish distress.

“It is only for a few months, dearest, and we will write to each other
every week. Then, when I come back, we will be happy.”

“I feel as if we were parting forever,” she sighed, but he smiled
tenderly, and answered:

“No, no, Pansy--only for a little while.”

But his own heart was heavy, too. He adored his lovely little
sweetheart, and vague fears assailed him lest some one should win
her away from him during his enforced absence. She was so young, so
untaught, what if she learned to doubt him? What if the enemies that
encompassed both should turn her heart against him?

A sudden mad resolve came over him. With quickened breath, he whispered:

“Pansy, in a week I must go and leave you. What if I married you before
I went, and left my own sweet wife waiting for my return?”

She started and gazed wildly at him.

“They--they--would not permit it,” she returned breathlessly.

He smiled triumphantly.

“We could run away, my pet,” he said. “For instance, suppose when you
started to work to-morrow morning I should meet you? We could take the
early morning train for Washington, be married, and return by the time
the factory closes for the day. You could go quietly home again, and no
one need know our sweet secret until I came back to claim you.”



CHAPTER VII. ACQUIRING A STEPFATHER.


Mrs. Laurens would have been only too glad to listen to her daughter,
if she had had any idea that Norman Wylde’s intentions toward Pansy
were strictly honorable. But her brother’s representations had so
thoroughly alarmed her that she deemed it proper to repress the girl
with the utmost sternness, while at the same time her motherly heart
yearned tenderly over her and she longed for the means of lightening
the girl’s hard lot in life. And it was for her children’s sake more
than aught else that the yet young widow began to contemplate the idea
of a second marriage.

She was still a pretty and attractive woman, and for a year past she
had had an admirer who had pressed his suit more than once, and would
have been accepted only for the fact that her five children were, with
one accord, vehemently opposed to having a stepfather.

The widow could not help feeling vexed with her dictatorial brood.

Her suitor was a groceryman with a fair business, and owned a neat
brick house, well furnished, from which a wife had been carried out
more than two years ago to her grave.

The widower sadly wanted a housekeeper, and it seemed to him that
pretty little Mrs. Laurens was the proper one to fill the position.

The children were rather a drawback, it was true, but he had decided
that Pansy could go on earning her living at the factory and Willie at
the store.

Mrs. Laurens, all unconscious of her suitor’s sordid intentions,
wished very much to marry Mr. Finley, and at last permitted him to
overrule her objections and persuade her that her children had no right
to dictate to her in regard to a second marriage. It seemed quite a
coincidence that, on the very Sunday when Norman Wylde was persuading
pretty Pansy to a secret marriage, her mother was listening to counsel
somewhat similar from her elderly lover.

And on Monday evening, when Pansy got in, rather late, flustered
and frightened lest her mother should chide her for her tardiness,
she found the children sitting around, supperless and forlorn, and
manifestly relieved at her entrance.

“Where is mamma?” she asked, glancing around, rather guiltily; and
Alice, the eldest of the three younger children, replied:

“Mamma had on her gray cashmere dress when we got home from school, and
she put on her bonnet and said she was going out a while, and that we
must be good children till she got back.”

“Very well; I will get you some supper,” their sister answered,
relieved to think that her own escapade would pass undetected. She
bustled around with glowing cheeks and curiously bright eyes, until, in
a few moments, carriage wheels were heard pausing in the street before
their door, and the eager children hastened to open it, tumbling over
each other in their gleeful excitement.

What was their surprise to find that it was their own mother who had
come in the carriage. She was accompanied by Mr. Finley, who came with
her into the house and stood by her side with a consequential air,
while she said, in a half-frightened voice:

“Now, don’t get mad, children, for it won’t do any good. I was married
half an hour ago to Mr. Finley.”

Sheer surprise sealed every mouth, and, taking advantage of the
momentary pause, she continued:

“I did it this way to escape the fuss I knew you would all make. I
am going with Mr. Finley on a wedding tour of a week, to visit his
relations in North Carolina. I packed my trunk to-day, and I depend
on you, Pansy, dear, to keep house for me while I’m gone. You needn’t
go to work any more till I come back. Now, come and kiss me good-by,
my precious children, for the carriage is waiting to take me to the
train.”



CHAPTER VIII. SECRET VISITS.


Poor Mrs. Laurens! Her anticipation of a brighter future for her
children very speedily dissolved into thin air.

She came back in a week from her wedding tour, and moved into her new
home, Mr. Finley’s nice brick residence on Church Hill; and then she
hinted broadly to her new-made husband that she would like to take
Pansy from the factory and Willie from the store, and send both to
school again.

To her grief and dismay, Mr. Finley promptly refused her requests.

“I married you, not your family, Mrs. Finley,” he said coarsely.

“But I surely expected--and you certainly let me think, sir--that you
would support my children,” faltered the bride.

“The three younger children, who are yet too young to work for
themselves, I expect to board and clothe, certainly, but not the two
others. They must remain at work, clothe themselves, and pay a small
sum monthly for board,” was the stern reply, which so angered the
astonished woman that she cried out resentfully:

“If I had known this I would not have married you!”

“If you married me with mercenary motives you deserve to be
disappointed,” was the cold reply of her liege lord, and, as may be
supposed, the honeymoon did not proceed very smoothly after that.

Willie kept on at the store, the children at school, and Pansy at the
factory. She had not expected anything else, she told her mother,
with some slight bitterness, when she half apologized to her for the
necessity of her keeping on at work.

She resented with silent jealousy her mother’s marriage to this stern,
hard man, so unlike her own father, who had been so gentle and loving,
and the breach between her heart and her mother’s grew wider still as
days passed on and brought the cold, dark days of winter.

For one day one of the little children had unwittingly let out a secret
that Pansy had adjured her to keep. It was the fact that Norman Wylde
had several times visited the house during Mrs. Finley’s absence on her
wedding tour.

There had been a scene between mother and daughter, harsh reproaches
and upbraidings, answered first by tears, then by girlish resentment.

“I had as much right to deceive you as you had to run away and marry
that horrid man!” the girl cried, with flashing eyes.

Then Mrs. Finley had so far forgotten love and dignity as to strike
her rebellious daughter--slapping both cheeks soundly, and threatening
something of the same kind unless Pansy broke off with Norman Wylde.

“He is gone to England,” the girl answered sullenly, and the mother
prayed in secret that he might never return, unwitting of the terrible
interest Pansy had in the absentee.

So the long winter days wore away, and Pansy’s companions at the
factory began to remark a great change in the young girl. Her cheeks
had grown pale and wan, and her eyes dim, as if from constant tears.
Her light, dancing step had become heavy and dragging, and she no
longer seemed to care about her personal appearance, for her dresses
were cheap and ill-fitting, and she was always shivering with cold,
although constantly wrapped in a thick shawl. The gay girls at the
factory often teased her about her chilliness, and told her she must be
going into a consumption.

Poor child! If they had guessed what was aching at her heart they must
have pitied her. Not a word or line had she received from Norman Wylde
since the day he had sailed away from Richmond, after the one week of
delirious happiness in which she had been his adored wife.

Faithfully had she kept the secret of her marriage, but the time was
coming when it must be declared, or she would have to bear the burden
of a bitter shame. Unless Norman Wylde returned soon, she would be the
mother of a child on whom the world would frown in scorn, while she,
poor girl, would never be able to lift up her head again.

Oh, how she repented her disobedience to her mother! If she had
listened to her she would not have come to this terrible pass. Perhaps
Norman was false to her, perhaps that marriage in Washington had been a
fraudulent one. She had read of such things.

“Heaven pity me, how shall I ever confess the truth to my mother?” she
sobbed nightly, as she lay wide awake in her little room, too wretched
and frightened to sleep, wondering why her husband did not write to
her, and praying always that Heaven would remove her very soon from a
world that she had found so dark and cruel.

A dark, terrible day came to her at last--dark, although the sun was
shining in the sky, the green grass springing, and the gay birds
chirping in the budding trees, for it was May now, and the world was
made new again--she was discharged from the factory.

No reason was given, none asked. She understood.

For many days she had seen that her companions at work shunned and
sneered at her. She had had many friends among them once, but now not
one. She did not blame them. In their place she would perhaps have
acted the same. There is a wide, wide gulf between womanly purity
and fallen virtue, and they believed that she was a lost and ruined
creature.

As she went slowly, wearily homeward she felt that she could not bear
to tell her mother of her discharge, for then she would have to
confess all the rest.

“I could more easily die than confess to her, for, oh, she will be so
angry, so angry!” she shuddered weakly, and a desperate resolve came to
her.

She would run away and hide herself from all who had ever known her.

Perhaps she would die when her trouble came. She hoped so, for she was
weary of her life.

Out of the money that remained from her wages after paying her board,
she had saved a few dollars. She would take it and go away. Mamma
would not miss her much. She had never seemed the same to her children
since she married the hard, stern man who kept her at work even more
slavishly than when she was a widow, for he would not hire a servant,
and she was compelled to do the drudgery of the house herself.

Pansy went into the house very quietly, then helped her mother with
the supper, as was her usual custom. She pretended to eat something
herself, then went up to her own little room, eager to make her
arrangements for getting away.

There was not much to do, only to make up a bundle of such clothing as
she would need the most and could conveniently carry. There were some
tiny garments, too, clumsily fashioned by the poor girl’s unskillful
hands; they must not be left behind. She tied them all up securely, put
on her hat, and sat down to wait until the house should be still, when
she would slip quietly out and make her way to the station, where she
could take the first train to Petersburg.

She felt ill and wretched. Her heart was throbbing to suffocation. How
dreadful the suspense was, how slowly the time crept by!

Thank Heaven, they were all abed at last, and she could go now.

She rose up with her bundle, shrinking a little at the thought of being
alone in the streets by night.

At that inauspicious moment Mrs. Finley suddenly entered the room.



CHAPTER IX. THE SECRET DIVULGED.


At the opening of the door, mother and daughter recoiled from each
other with smothered cries of amazement.

Pansy, who had counted herself so sure of escaping, saw herself
detected in the act of flight, forced to confession, shamed, disgraced;
but after that one exclamation of alarm she hurriedly determined to
brave it out, if possible; so, clutching her bundle tightly, she
assumed an expression of calmness that she was very far from feeling.

“Why, Pansy, what does this mean? I expected to find you abed,”
exclaimed her mother, staring in astonishment at the shrinking girl.

“I--I--wanted to go out a few minutes, mamma, dear. My new calico,
you know, I must take it to that sewing girl on the next square,
for I shall need it next week,” stammered Pansy, trying to push by
her mother; but Mrs. Finley suddenly put her back against the door,
exclaiming suspiciously:

“Going to the dressmaker’s at this time of night? I don’t believe it!
You are up to some mischief, Pansy Laurens! Running away, perhaps, and
it’s a good thing I caught you in the nick of time. Give me that bundle
and let me look into it.”

There was a brief, short struggle, then Mrs. Finley triumphed, and
Pansy flung herself, bitterly weeping, upon the floor, while her mother
rummaged through the telltale bundle.

“Aha, just as I thought! Change of clothes--oh, you wicked girl! What
is this? Oh-h-h, heavens! Pa-a-n-sy Lau-rens, what does this mean?”

She was holding up sundry tiny bits of soft flannel and linen trimmed
with homemade crochet edging. Pansy did not lift her head. She knew
without looking, and she moaned despairingly:

“Oh, mamma, mamma, if only you had let me go away in peace you need
never have known!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“You say that she will live, doctor? Oh, I am so glad! And yet it would
be better, perhaps, for my poor girl if she had died.”

Pansy’s eyelids felt too tired and heavy to lift from her eyes, but she
seemed to struggle back to consciousness and hear those words spoken
above her head. In that moment, too, came a confused memory of the
stormy scene with her mother when she had been forced to tell all her
story and to bear such bitter reproach and shame as almost maddened
her, so that she was glad of the unconsciousness that stole upon her,
blotting out for a few weeks all the bitter past and shameful present.

Yes, it had been three weeks since that terrible night, and when Pansy
heard those words spoken over her head in her mother’s voice she
guessed aright that she had had a dangerous illness.

She opened her blue eyes with an effort, and saw the doctor standing
with her mother by the bed.

“See--she is conscious at last. She will begin to get well very fast
now,” he said, and gave her an encouraging smile; but Pansy had none to
give in return.

It seemed to her that she should never smile again.

When he had gone, she looked wistfully at her mother, without daring
to speak, fearing to hear again the scathing reproaches with which she
had been assailed that night; but Mrs. Finley had been softened by her
daughter’s illness, and she spoke to her very kindly:

“My dear, you have been ill three weeks of fever, but the doctor thinks
you are going to get well now.”

Pansy thought of the words she had overheard:

“It would be better, perhaps, for my poor girl if she had died.”

She could not speak just yet, but her big, mournful blue eyes asked a
question that Mrs. Finley quickly understood.

“Yes, it is all over long ago. It happened that night when I kept you
from running away. You were so ill you never knew.”

She paused, but the big, beseeching blue eyes were still asking silent
questions, and, putting her hand up to her face, Mrs. Finley said, in a
broken voice:

“Your child only lived one day, Pansy. It was better so.”

“Dead!”

That one wailing cry broke the stillness, then low and bitter sobs
heaved Pansy’s breast. The mother who had never seen the face of her
child was weeping over its death.

“It was better so, my dear, better so. Had it lived it could but have
added to your disgrace,” Mrs. Finley kept repeating, and at last the
poor girl, stung by the words, answered petulantly:

“How can you talk of disgrace? I told you that I was the wife of Norman
Wylde.”

“You were deceived, my poor child,” answered her mother sadly.

“Deceived!”

“Yes, Pansy. I told Mr. Finley everything. He went to Washington to
find out the truth. My poor girl, that villain deceived you. There was
no license taken out; there was no minister of the name you told me,
and you had no marriage certificate. By your confidence in a villain
against whom we all warned you, you have ruined yourself and brought
disgrace upon your relations.”

There was a long, long pause of utter consternation, then the stricken
girl moaned pitifully:

“Oh, mamma, why did you nurse me back to life? You should have let me
die.”

One week later Pansy was sitting up, a pale little ghost of the bright,
pretty girl who, just a year ago, had gone home with Uncle Robbins to
find so cruel a fate. She had been watching the sun set, and turned
with heavy, listless eyes when her mother entered with a slice of toast
and some tea for her supper.

“Mamma, will you tell me why you always lock my door on the outside?
Are you afraid that I will run away?” she asked sadly.

“Oh, my dear, do not be frightened, but--I am afraid of your brother.”

“Mamma--of Willie?”

“Yes, he is sixteen now, you know--old enough to feel keenly the
disgrace that has fallen on the family. He is so angry, and he has been
egged on, I know, by Mr. Finley. I--I--hope he will come to his senses
some time,” sighing.

“Mamma, you said you were afraid. You locked the door whenever you went
out. Why?” panted Pansy, with dilated eyes; and the wretched mother,
leaning over her wretched child, whispered plaintively:

“Try to forgive him, my poor child, for he is half crazed now, and his
passionate boyish temper all ablaze with anger. Poor lad! The disgrace
has blighted all his future, he says, and he has sworn revenge.”

“Revenge--on me?” questioned Pansy faintly.

“Yes, on you. He has got hold of a pistol somehow, and he is no longer
very steady at his work. I fear he drinks some. He vows he will shoot
you on sight.”

“Oh, my Heaven!”

“But do not be frightened, dear. It is nothing but boyish bluster, I
am sure. Only I am afraid of him just yet, while the drink fires his
blood. So it is better to keep your room a while.”

“Every one knows, then, mamma?” with a burning blush.

“We could not keep it a secret. Every one suspected you,” sighed the
unhappy woman, bursting into a flood of tears.

But she wept more bitterly still next morning, for, in spite of the
locked door, Pansy was missing, and a tiny note on her pillow told the
story:

  Bless you, my faithful mamma, and help you to forgive me for my
  willful ways that caused you so much sorrow. Tell Willie not to drink
  any more. I will never come back, never disgrace him again.

  UNHAPPY PANSY.



CHAPTER X. A HEARTSICK FUGITIVE.


Pansy Laurens meant to keep her word when she wrote to her mother that
she would never come back. She felt that this would be best.

If she remained at home the shadow of her deep disgrace would be
reflected on her family. If she went away people would forget it in
time.

“I should like for them to think that I am dead. Then mamma would not
feel any further anxiety over my fate. Her mind would be easy. She
would feel that I was at rest,” she thought, and it was this that led
her to take away with her a small bundle of clothing marked with her
name, and throw it into the river. “It will be found by some one, and
then they will say that I drowned myself. It will be a great relief to
Willie,” she said to herself, with sorrowful satisfaction, and with a
bravery born of despair, she escaped from her room by means of a rope
plaited of torn sheets.

Her hands were torn and bleeding when she reached the bottom, but,
without a murmur, she took up the bundle she had thrown down, and made
her way to Libby Hill, that beautiful eminence overlooking the historic
James River. She sat down there a while to rest in the soft gleam of
the summer moonlight, and to think of the times when she had met Norman
Wylde there and wandered with him through the beautiful park, while her
young heart thrilled with love, and hope.

“Alas, alas! he was but amusing himself with the humble working girl;
he but plucked the flower of my love to trample it under his feet,” she
murmured, in bitterest despair; and presently she went through the park
and past the line of stately houses that guarded it on the left side,
and dragged herself down the steep declivity to the river.

How beautiful, how silvery white it gleamed in the clear moonlight as
it pursued its winding course toward Chesapeake Bay. The factory girl,
whose soul was deeply imbued with a love of the beautiful, gazed with a
sort of solemn rapture on the magnificent scene outspread before her,
and as she flung her little bundle into the glittering waves, lifted
her sad eyes to heaven, murmuring, in a tone of awe:

“I am tempted to spring into those bright waves and end all my sorrow.”

Then she saw a dark form moving toward her at some little distance, and
fled away, fearing lest she should be arrested by a policeman, for it
was nearing midnight, and she knew that it would seem strange to see a
woman alone in the streets, deserted as they were by almost every one.

She went along slyly and quietly, like a fugitive fleeing from justice,
over the long distance--two miles and more--that intervened between her
and the railway station, at which she meant to take a train for the
West.

How strange it seemed to be stealing along Main Street like a shadow,
frightened at the glare of the street lamps, lest they should reveal
her hurrying form to some alert policeman. She was glad when she
reached Seventeenth Street Market, and darted inside of it, gliding
nervously along between the brick stalls as far as they went, and
coming out at last almost at the end of her journey, for soon Broad
Street was gained, and then, a little later, the depot.

There was a midnight train making up for the West. She hurried to the
ticket office and bought a ticket for Cincinnati.

“I shall be sure to find work in a great big city like that,” she
thought, as she took her place in a car and sank wearily into a seat,
bursting into tears as the whistle blew and the train rushed out of
the station, at the thought that she was leaving behind her forever
mother, home, and native city--dear old Richmond, on its green, smiling
hills--the place where she was born, and where she had spent her
eighteen years of life.

She had never known how well she loved Richmond until she felt herself
leaving it forever behind her, with all the associations so dear to
her heart. Tears blinded her beautiful eyes, and a sort of passionate
hatred for the lover who had wrought her so much woe swelled her young
heart.

“Oh, did he think of all this when he betrayed me?” she wondered
bitterly, and a yearning for revenge came to her, a bitter longing to
pay him back in his own coin for all that she was suffering now.

“Heaven will send me the chance, and I will wring his heart as he has
tortured mine,” she vowed to herself, with eyes that flashed through
her tears, and just then the conductor came along to take up the
tickets.

The car was not crowded, and he had time to observe how Pansy’s face
was all wet with tears, and how nervously her little hand shook when
she presented her ticket.

“Are you ill, miss?” he asked politely. “Can I do anything for you?”

“No, I am not ill; there is nothing I wish, thank you,” she answered;
but, as she saw how surprised he looked, she added: “I was only crying
because I am leaving my native city forever, to go among strangers. I
am an orphan, and must seek work in the West.”

“I should think you could certainly find work in Richmond,” he said;
but she shook her head and put her hand to her white throat in such a
pathetic way that he knew she was choked with tears.

He turned away with a heart full of pity, thinking of his own pretty
daughter at home, and hoping that she might never come to this. The
next day he heard that a beautiful young working girl of Richmond had
drowned herself in the James River, and his thoughts involuntarily flew
to the one who had left Richmond last night, although he did not think
of connecting the two together, save as sisters in sorrow.

“There was a tragedy of woe in the beautiful face of that orphan girl,”
he thought often, for the memory of her grief did not fade from his
mind for some time.

Pansy was touched by his manly sympathy, but she pretended not to
notice it. She did not want him to find out who she was, or anything
about her, lest it should interfere with the success of her plan for
making everybody believe she was dead.

But, oh, that long, weary night in which she was whirled away so
rapidly from all that she had ever known--it would stay in her memory
forever, with all its pain and sadness.

When they reached Staunton, quite a large crowd came in, and there was
another conductor, who had so many tickets to take up that he did not
pay much attention to the sad young traveler who seemed so lonely and
friendless, and who at last fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion, and
did not awaken for many hours afterward--not, in fact, until a terrible
railroad collision near Louisville, Kentucky, derailed the train and
sent many of the passengers into their last long sleep.

Pansy was rudely awakened by the shock and jar, and found herself
fastened down beneath some timbers which had, fortunately, formed a
sort of arch over her form, holding her down, yet still protecting her,
so that she was quite unhurt, although so frightened that she fainted
dead away at hearing the shrieks of the wounded and dying all around
her.

Busy, helpful hands were soon at work, and within an hour she was
released from her uncomfortable position. They carried her out into a
grassy field, where the survivors of the accident were sitting around
in the burning sunshine. Pansy was struck by one lady, who looked as if
she were far gone in consumption, and who was sobbing bitterly over the
death of her maid.

“I was quite alone but for her, and we were traveling to California for
my health,” she said. “Oh, I know not what to do! I am too weak and ill
to travel alone.”

Pansy went up to the poor invalid, and said timidly:

“Lady, I am an orphan, and I was going to Cincinnati to seek for work.
Perhaps you would be willing to take me in the place of your maid that
was killed. I would try very hard to please you.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, my child! I am only too glad to get some one
to go on with me,” cried the invalid, eagerly accepting the offer.



CHAPTER XI. SHELTERING ARMS.


Pansy Laurens had found that “friend in need” who is “a friend,
indeed,” when she became acquainted with Mrs. Beach, the invalid lady.
She took a deep, kindly interest in the lonely, friendless girl, and
during the few days when they stayed over at Louisville to recover from
the shock of the accident mastered much of her story.

She was surprised when she learned that the lovely girl was of the
working classes, for she had fancied that Pansy’s wonderful beauty had
descended from aristocratic, high-bred parentage, but Pansy proudly
undeceived her.

“My father was a mechanic, and my grandfather was a farmer. My mother
was a farmer’s daughter, too, so we were only plain, hard-working
people. I left the public school where I was educated as soon as my
father died, and worked in a tobacco factory three years.”

Mrs. Beach, who was a Southerner, and “a born aristocrat,” looked
honestly surprised, and spoke out frankly her astonishment.

“I thought,” she said, “that the girls employed in the tobacco
factories of the South were of a very low and ignorant class, indeed. I
have received that impression somehow.”

Pansy thought of Juliette Ives and the scorn she had displayed toward
her, and answered bitterly:

“Many have thought the same, Mrs. Beach; but in the three years I spent
in a tobacco factory I met many girls as beautiful, as refined, and
as good as are met with in the highest circles of what is called good
society. I cannot believe that nobility is only to be met with in the
ranks of the rich and well-born. The good and bad are met with in all
classes.”

“That is quite true, my child,” said the lady, to whom Pansy had not
confided the story of her cruel experience among the aristocrats of her
native city. She gazed admiringly at the flushed face of the excited
girl, and added: “I do not wish to flatter you, my dear girl, but I
will say frankly that both your mind and person fit you to adorn the
highest society. It would be an injustice to you to lower you to the
position of my personal attendant; therefore you shall remain with me
as my companion, and as soon as we reach San Diego, my destination, I
will try to secure some elderly woman as my maid.”

Pansy’s tears of gratitude amply thanked the noble woman for her
generous words, and she sighed to think that she dared not confide to
her the whole story of her life.

But she could not bring herself to repeat to a stranger, however
kindly, the sorrows of her unfortunate love affair.

“And, then, I dare not, for she would perhaps spurn me from her
presence, deeming me wicked where I was only unfortunate,” she thought
shrinkingly.

She had told Mrs. Beach that her name was Pansy Wilcox, and that she
had left home because her mother had married a man who was unkind to
his stepchildren. Mrs. Beach thought the reason was a fair one, and
did not blame the young girl much. She had some reason for knowing how
unpleasant a girl’s home could be made under such circumstances.

They safely reached San Diego, one of the most beautiful and romantic
places in California, and for a while Pansy was so enchanted with her
new home and its Italian-like surroundings that she ceased to grieve
for her native Richmond and the dear ones left behind. A new life
opened before her: one of comparative ease and luxury, compared to what
she had known, for with the gentle invalid lady her duties as companion
were usually light and pleasant. Mrs. Beach had soon found a clever
maid, and, as she rented a small furnished cottage near the beautiful
bay of San Diego, and hired two Chinese servants, life began to flow on
very smoothly and fairly to those who made up her household.

She had told Pansy very little about herself, save that she was a widow
with a fair income that would cease at her death.

“I have no relatives save a distant one of my husband, who will,
perhaps, be glad when I die, as he will then inherit the property,” she
said, adding: “But I mean to live as long as I can, and this charming
climate makes me feel almost as if I am going to get well again.”

“Heaven grant you may,” exclaimed Pansy, but when she looked at the wan
cheeks and sunken eyes of the hapless lady it seemed to her that Mrs.
Beach could not live much longer, even in this charming climate.

“And when she dies I shall be thrown homeless upon the world again,”
she thought, with a shudder of fear and terror.

Perhaps Mrs. Beach thought of this, too, for she took a deep interest
in her fair young companion. One day she said gravely to Pansy:

“Do you ever expect to marry, Pansy?”

Pansy grew crimson first, then deadly pale.

“No, never. I hate men!” she exclaimed, with such energy that Mrs.
Beach, a keen student of human nature, exclaimed:

“Ah, then, you have had a lover?”

Pansy saw that she had betrayed herself by her vehemence, and, hanging
her head bashful she sighed:

“Yes, I had a lover once, and he proved false to me. No one else shall
ever make love to me again.”

“Poor child!” said the lady compassionately. She remained silent a few
moments, then said: “I hope you will not think me a meddlesome old
lady, Pansy, but I have been thinking of your future. If I should die,
what would become of you?”

Pansy burst into passionate tears. “I should never find such a noble
friend again,” she sobbed.

“I have been thinking of that,” said Mrs. Beach, laying her thin hand
gently on the bowed head. “Your future has been on my mind for some
time. You ought to be learning something by which you could support
yourself. There are many avenues of support open to women now.”

“Oh, I know it, but I have had no chance to learn anything. Dear, noble
friend, if only you could suggest something!” cried Pansy gratefully.

“I will think over it a few days, and then advise you,” answered Mrs.
Beach gravely.

And at the end of a week she told Pansy that she believed that
typewriting would prove a remunerative business for a young girl.

“I will purchase a good machine, and you shall learn,” she said kindly.

“Oh, how kind you are to me! I wish I knew how to thank you for all
your goodness,” cried the poor girl, with tears of gratitude.

Mrs. Beach smiled and answered:

“Only stay with me while I live, Pansy, and I shall be well rewarded.
After all, my kindness to you is only a species of selfishness, for
I wish to have you with me. It brightens my lonely life to have the
beautiful face of a young girl about me all the time.”

They stayed in San Diego a year, and every month made the exquisite
place more dear to them. Pansy worked industriously at her typewriting
machine, and became quite proficient; but she did not neglect her kind
benefactress.

It was both her duty and her pleasure to add as much of happiness as
possible to the life of the suffering invalid. In doing so she reaped
the rich reward of those who try to lighten the sorrows of others, for
she had less time to think of her own, and in consequence was far less
unhappy.

There was not a day in which she did not thank Heaven for providing
such a safe haven for her when she had fled, frightened and despairing,
from her old home; not a day in which she did not pray for the dear
ones she had left behind. Most bitterly she repented the willfulness
that had led to all her sorrow.

“Had I only minded my mother, no harm would have come to me,” she
sighed over and over.

Suddenly over the calm, peaceful life they were leading in the little
cottage home fell a dark shadow.

Mrs. Beach had been failing for some time, and at last it became only
too evident to Pansy and the few friends they had made in San Diego
that her days were numbered. The invalid herself was not ignorant
of the fact, for after an interview with her physician one day she
sent for Pansy and gently broke the sad tidings that she had, in all
probability, but a few weeks to live.

“Do not grieve, my dear. You know I have been prepared for this some
time,” she said, with sweet resignation. “It only remains now for me to
make my arrangements for the end.”

Pansy’s irrepressible sobs drowned her voice for a while, but when the
agitated girl had grown calmer she continued:

“I have telegraphed for my husband’s cousin, who will inherit the
fortune whose income I am using, to come at once to San Diego; and he
will attend to all the final arrangements. I will be buried here, as
my husband was lost at sea many years ago, and it matters not to me
where my ashes repose, as they can never rest beside his. I wish, my
dear girl, that I had a fortune to leave you, more especially as the
man who will inherit mine does not need it, being already very wealthy.
But my husband’s wealth, as I never bore him any children, reverts by
his will to his own family.”



CHAPTER XII. BEGINNING OVER AGAIN.


Colonel Falconer, the man whose coming was so anxiously expected by
Mrs. Beach, arrived in ten days at San Diego; but the invalid had died
just a few hours before his arrival.

Poor Pansy was once more alone in the world, for Colonel Falconer,
though full of pity and sympathy for the friendless girl, could not
be to her such a friend as he wished. He was fifty years old, and a
bachelor, therefore if he had offered to divide with her the fortune
that had come to him by Mrs. Beach’s death the world would have caviled.

He was a typical Virginian, generous and true-hearted, and he grieved
that such should be the case, for he would willingly have made ample
provision for the support of the lovely, penniless girl who had been so
dear to his deceased relative.

“It is a deuced shame that my hands are tied in this way. I feel mean,
taking all that money and seeing that beautiful little creature go
out to earn her own living,” he said to himself the day after the
funeral, when Pansy had come to him to tell him, with a pale, sad
little face, that she had been so fortunate as to be offered a place in
a real-estate office as a typewriter.

“I have accepted the place, and will enter on my duties to-morrow,” she
said simply; and then he drew forward a chair, and begged her to be
seated.

“It seems very sad that you should be left alone like this. Have you no
relations, no friends, Miss Wilcox?”

Pansy flushed warmly, then grew pale again, and, after a moment’s
hesitancy, said:

“I came from Louisville to this place with Mrs. Beach because I wished
to work for myself. My father was dead, my mother had married again,
and my stepfather was not kind to me. I prefer to remain in California
alone, rather than to return to my own home.”

“She is a plucky little thing,” thought the colonel admiringly, and he
answered, aloud:

“I don’t know but what you’re right, Miss Wilcox, and I admire your
independence. I want you to promise one thing: You will let me be your
friend? I shall remain in San Diego some time yet, and if you will
permit me to call on you sometimes I shall be very glad.”

He did not mean to lose sight of her if he could help it, for he had
a fancy that if Mrs. Beach had lived to see him again she would have
commended her protégée to his care.

“Hang it all, if I were twenty years younger I’d marry her if she would
have me,” he said to himself, when she had gone out, after giving her
consent to his request and telling him where she should go to board. It
was at a very simple, unpretentious place, for in San Diego, as in all
of the rapidly growing towns of southern California, board and lodging
were very high. It would take all of her salary to support her even in
a simple fashion.

Colonel Falconer knew this well, and his heart ached for the brave,
beautiful girl who had made a stronger impression on him than any woman
he had ever met. When she bade him good-by that afternoon and went away
with Mrs. Beach’s maid, who was also rendered homeless by the death of
her mistress, he felt a strangely tender yearning to take the beautiful
girl in his arms and kiss away the tears that he saw trembling on her
long, curling lashes.

He retained the Chinese servants, and stayed on at the cottage during
the summer, and in that time he managed to see a great deal of
beautiful little Pansy, although he knew that it was unwise, for he
soon found that his ardent admiration for the lovely girl was deepening
into love.

If he had been younger he would have proposed to marry her; but it
seemed to him that Pansy would only laugh at the idea of having such an
old fellow for a husband.

He did not know how Pansy was touched by his kindness and friendship.
She was very lonely, for the few acquaintances she had made during
Mrs. Beach’s life did not trouble themselves about her now that she
was poor and friendless. They were rich, fashionable people, too, who
had no time, if they had had the inclination, to look after any one
not in society. They were very gracious to Colonel Falconer, but that
little typewriter girl to whom he was so attentive--that was altogether
different. Some there were who hinted to him that it was a mistake on
his part to show her so much kindness. It would spoil her for her
humbler lot, awaken in her aspirations for higher things than she could
reasonably expect.

They set Colonel Falconer thinking, and the upshot of it was that he
went away to San Francisco for several months. He did not go to bid
Pansy good-by, but simply sent her a note of farewell, saying that he
would write her sometimes and requesting the favor of a reply.

“Oh, how I miss him! It was like having a kind elder brother,” Pansy
sighed to herself, and now the evenings and Sundays grew very lonely,
indeed.

There were no more pleasant drives Sunday afternoons, spinning over the
sands past the glittering bay; no more books, nor fruits and flowers.
There was a young clerk in the office where she worked who would have
made love to her if she would have noticed him, but she never did, and
in her loneliness her thoughts went back more and more to her lost love
and her dead past.



CHAPTER XIII. IN A BOARDING HOUSE.


Perhaps it was the brooding over the past and the pain and remorse that
wore upon Pansy until she fell ill and had that long fever, although
some of the little household declared that it was something she had
read in a Southern paper.

When Colonel Falconer, who had grown uneasy because his last letter to
Pansy was not answered, came suddenly back to San Diego, he found that
the girl had been ill of a brain fever for several weeks.

The mistress of the boarding house, who had been very kind to the sick
girl, explained everything as well as she could:

“She had been looking droopy an’ peaked some time, an’ her appetite no
better than a baby’s, when she kem inter the parlor one Sunday after
church, an’ set down to read. All at once she screamed out, an’ fell
in a faint. She had this paper in her hand, an’ I’ll allus believe
she read something in it that was bad news to her. But I’ve read it
through an’ through, and I can’t guess what ’tis. Maybe you kin.”

She put the newspaper in his hand--one almost two months old. It was a
daily paper, published at Richmond, Virginia.

“I do not think anything in this could have affected her. She was from
Kentucky. Where did she get this?” he asked.

“Some transient boarder must have left it, I think. It had been laying
around on the parlor table several days when she picked it up.”

He went over the paper carefully--the deaths, the marriages--but he
saw nothing about any one by the name of Wilcox. There was a society
column, and he went over that, too, although he did not expect to find
anything relating to her, for she had been very careful to impress
upon his mind, with a sort of proud humility, that she belonged to the
humble walks of life.

“Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly.

“You’ve found it?” exclaimed Mrs. Scruggs.

“Oh, no, nothing relating to her,” he answered quickly.

The paragraph that had surprised him was this:

  Norman Wylde has returned from his long sojourn abroad, and his
  much-talked-of marriage to the beautiful Miss Ives will take place
  very soon.

Major Falconer knew both parties very well, but he had never spoken of
them to Pansy. He forgot both almost immediately in his anxiety over
the sick girl.

“Mrs. Scruggs, I wonder if I might see her? I am a very old friend,” he
said.

“She is sitting up a little while to-day. I know she would be glad to
see you,” was the answer, and she immediately conducted him to Pansy’s
room.

The sick girl was so surprised that she uttered a cry of joy. Her blue
eyes lighted with pleasure.

“Oh, I am so glad!” she exclaimed impulsively.

Mrs. Scruggs went quietly out. He knelt down by her side and kissed her
little hands with the ardor of a younger lover.

Yes, all his prudent resolves had melted before his joy at seeing her
again, and his pity for her suffering. Gently, so as not to startle her
from him, he told her of his love, and begged her to be his wife.

“I am old enough to be your father, I know; but my heart is young, and,
then, I could take such good care of you, my darling,” he said.

“Oh, you are too good to me, and I--I could not love you enough,” she
faltered.

“I would teach you to love me,” he answered. And she had such a deep
regard for him that it seemed to her that it would be very easy to
learn that lesson.



CHAPTER XIV. A SECOND MARRIAGE.


San Diego had a sensation when Colonel Falconer, the rich Southerner,
married the beautiful young typewriter within a few days after his
return from San Francisco.

He had pleaded for an early marriage, and she, after some hesitancy,
had consented.

“There is no one whose consent I have to ask, I suppose?” he said; and,
after a moment’s silence, she answered:

“No, there is no one. I have reason to think that my mother believes me
dead. I have no wish to undeceive her.”

“But does not that seem cruel?” he asked, and tears started to her eyes
as she answered bitterly:

“She has her new husband and other children to comfort her for my loss.”

He said no more on the subject, and preparations were made for a speedy
marriage. He declared that that would be best, and Pansy could not
gainsay the assertion. Her small stock of money had been exhausted
during her illness, and she was still too weak to go back to work.

So when her lover declared that they would be married quietly this
week, and go at once upon a wedding tour abroad, she did not make any
objection to the plan. She was glad to have her way smoothed out before
her by his kindly, generous hand.

“Oh, how good he is to me--how noble! I wish that I could love him more
in return for all his goodness,” she thought, sadly contrasting her
gentle, quiet affection for this good man with the passionate love she
had felt for one less worthy.

“Perhaps even now he is the husband of haughty Juliette Ives,” she
thought, and grew cold and pale at the fancy.

She believed that she hated Norman Wylde, and she trusted that she
might never meet him on earth again. To Colonel Falconer she gave the
utmost respect, and a placid, gentle affection utterly unlike that
ardent passion which she had outlived and outworn, as she believed, in
her heart.

She thought it a little strange that he never mentioned any of his
relatives, and, the day before they were married, she said:

“Are you sure that none of your grand relatives will object to your
marrying a poor little typewriter girl?”

To her surprise, he started and looked visibly embarrassed.

“Ah, I made a clever guess!” she exclaimed, with faint sarcasm, and
then he recovered himself.

“No--yes,” he stammered, and then added: “I have no near relatives,
Pansy, except a widowed sister. She has one child--a beautiful
daughter, who has counted confidently on being my heiress. I think they
both will feel disappointed at hearing of my marriage, but they have no
right to do so. My sister has a neat little fortune of her own, and her
daughter is soon to marry a rich man.”

“Then you have not written to ask their consent?” Pansy asked, with
unconscious bitterness, feeling an unaccountable antagonism to those
two unknown ones.

“Certainly not,” Colonel Falconer answered, with some surprise, and
continued: “I’m ashamed to confess that I don’t pretend to keep up any
correspondence with my sister. I have written her once since I came to
San Diego. She has not answered yet, so I shall not take the trouble to
announce my marriage to her until we are safe on the other side of the
Atlantic. She will be glad for such bad news to be delayed,” laughing
grimly.

Afterward it seemed strange to her that she had never thought of asking
the names of these people, who would soon be related to her so closely
by her marriage with Colonel Falconer. And it seemed equally strange
that he did not tell her without the asking. There was a fate in it,
she told herself, when she came to know, for if she had heard those two
names she would never have married Colonel Falconer, and run the risk
of again meeting Norman Wylde.

The next day they were married quietly at church, but there were quite
a number of people present, for the affair had become known through the
gossip of the delighted Mrs. Scruggs. Pansy remembered with a bitter
thrill that ceremony in Washington, which had made her so blindly
happy.

“Poor, deluded fool that I was!” she sighed, thinking how much sadder
and wiser she had grown since then, for now she was past twenty,
although she looked so fair and girlish no one would have thought she
was more than sixteen.

They left San Diego directly, and went abroad. They spent a year in
travel, and in that time Pansy learned much and improved much. The
clouds passed from her beautiful face, and she was tranquilly happy
with her husband, save when one blighting memory intervened. It was the
thought of Norman Wylde and the dark episode in her life that she had
concealed from Colonel Falconer.

“He believes me pure and good; he has the greatest confidence in my
goodness; yet all the while I am hiding from him a dark secret which I
dare not disclose. Heaven grant he may never find out the truth, for it
would be so hard for me to convince him that I was innocent, although
so foully wronged,” she thought often, when the unfailing kindness of
her husband touched her with ardent admiration for his noble nature and
awakened self-reproach within her sensitive mind.



CHAPTER XV. STARTLING NEWS.


Colonel Falconer had written, quite six months before, to his
relatives, apprising them of his marriage to a beautiful young girl
in California, but apparently they did not have any congratulations
to offer him, or they were deeply offended, for no reply came to his
letter.

“I am glad that they can afford to be so independent,” he thought, with
pique and contempt commingled.

He felt quite sure that they were indignant at the marriage that
deprived his niece of her anticipations of being his heiress, and he
resented the way in which they had treated him.

“Not even to wish me joy, after all the kindness they have received
from me,” he said bitterly; and, dismissing them from his thoughts, he
gave all his attention to his lovely young bride, who was so grateful
for his love, and who seemed to return it in a shy, gentle fashion that
was very pleasing.

They had not given a thought to returning home yet, when one morning
he found in his morning’s mail an American letter, broadly edged with
black. He turned pale as he caught it up, exclaiming:

“Juliette’s handwriting! My sister must be dead!”

And, tearing it open, he ran his eyes hastily over the black-edged
sheet.

Pansy watched him with startled eyes. That name Juliette had touched an
unpleasant chord in her memory.

Colonel Falconer heaved a long sigh, and placed the letter in her hands.

Pansy, womanlike, read the name at the end first. It was traced in
ornate characters, but it stung her like a serpent’s fang:

  Your unhappy niece,
  JULIETTE IVES.

She glanced at the top of the sheet, and read:

  RICHMOND, Virginia.

Colonel Falconer had walked to the window of their pretty breakfast
room, and was looking out--perhaps to hide a moisture in his eyes.

He did not see how pale grew the beautiful face of his young wife, nor
how her jeweled hands trembled as they held the letter before her eyes.
She read on, with a sinking heart:

  DEAR UNCLE: This is to tell you that mamma died yesterday, although I
  do not suppose you will care much, as you are so happy with the wife
  who crowded poor mamma and me out of your heart. She died suddenly,
  of heart disease, from which she suffered so long, and I am left
  penniless and friendless, for she spent everything she had before she
  died. We would have been more saving, but you always let us think I
  would have your money, and I think the news of your marriage hastened
  her death, she was so disappointed.

  Now what am I to do? I have no money, as you know, and I am not
  fitted to work for my living. Has your wife turned your heart against
  me, or are you willing to take mamma’s place and support me in the
  style I’ve been used to? I suppose I’ll be married, some time,
  although poor girls don’t stand much chance. I don’t think Norman
  would care for poverty, though, if only he would come to his senses
  in other things. I am here in your house still. We were glad you left
  us that when you married so suddenly and strangely. I’ve promised
  the servants you will pay their wages. I hope you will come home and
  settle with the people mamma owed. I charged the funeral expenses to
  you. I knew you wouldn’t mind. Please answer at once, and let me know
  what to expect from you.

  Your unhappy niece,
  JULIETTE IVES.

“So she is my husband’s niece? What a fatality!” Pansy murmured to
herself, fighting hard against the weakness and faintness stealing over
her. “And Norman Wylde has not married her yet,” her thoughts ran on,
with a sort of bitter triumph.

She sat silent, crushing the black-bordered sheet in her hands, her
heart beating slowly and heavily in her breast, a chill presentiment of
evil stealing over her mind.

“Is it possible that I shall have to come in contact again with that
proud, cruel girl? Oh, if I had only known this I should never have
married Colonel Falconer,” she thought bitterly.

Colonel Falconer turned around suddenly from the window.

“Well, my dear, what do you think of my niece’s letter?” he asked.

Pansy’s face flamed and her eyes flashed.

“I think it is impertinent, selfish, and heartless,” she answered
spiritedly.

He sighed, for that was his own impression of the letter, although he
hated to acknowledge it, even to himself. What hurt him most was her
half-contemptuous allusions to his wife, and the fact that she had
disdained to send a single kindly message to the woman who was, by
marriage, at least, her near relative.

“Juliette is a spoiled child. She has been pampered and indulged until
she considers no one but herself,” he said uneasily.

“That is easy to be seen,” she answered, with a touch of scorn.

“But there is some excuse for her just now,” continued the colonel, who
could not overcome at once the habit of long years of affection. “We
must consider the petulance of affliction, so natural in one reared
selfishly and luxuriously, as Juliette has been. Then, too, the poor
girl has had a love trouble that has helped to sour her temper.”

“A love trouble?” Pansy questioned, in a thick voice, without looking
up.

“Yes; she was engaged several years ago to a Mr. Wylde, of Richmond--a
fine young man in every respect, handsome, rich, and of fine family.
Juliette adored him, and was very jealous, so that when he engaged
in a flirtation with a designing little beauty of the lower classes
Juliette would take no excuses, but dismissed him in bitter anger. He
went abroad, leaving her to repent her harshness, and to try to mourn
her haste; for love soon conquered pride, and she would give the world
now to win him back. I had reason, a year ago, to believe that they had
made up their quarrel and would soon be married, but I was mistaken,
and Juliette no doubt is still pining for her lost lover.”

Pansy made no comment, for her husband’s words still rang in her ears:

“‘A designing little beauty of the lower classes.’ Oh, what if he knew!
what if he knew!” she thought, in terror that held her lips dumb.

Colonel Falconer took up a package of newspapers, and drew out one--the
Richmond _Dispatch_.

“Ah, this, too, is from Juliette. No doubt it contains the notice of
her mother’s death,” he said.

His surmise was correct. It recorded the death of Mrs. Ives, at the age
of fifty-four, for she had been his elder by several years.

He placed the paper, as he had done the letter, before Pansy’s eyes;
and she read and reread the words announcing her enemy’s death, but in
a dull, mechanical way, without any triumph in the fact that those
cruel lips would never utter any falsehoods against her again. She felt
half dazed by the suddenness with which the past had risen before her
just as she began to hope and believe that it was buried forever.

Her dull eyes traveled soberly up and down the short list of married
and dead, and suddenly a wild gleam came into them. A familiar name had
caught her attention. She read:

  On the 6th instant, at the residence of her mother, on Church Hill,
  Rosa Laurens, aged nine years and seven days, of diphtheria. Funeral
  private.

It was Pansy’s youngest sister--the baby, as she was always called in
the family. A wave of passionate grief overflowed Pansy’s heart and
forced a cry of despair from her white lips. Then she slipped from her
chair and lay in a long swoon upon the floor.

When reason returned she was lying upon her bed, with her maid chafing
her cold hands anxiously, and her husband bending over her with
frightened eyes.

“Oh, Pansy, what a shock you have given me!” he exclaimed; and as
everything rushed quickly over her she realized that she must hide her
troubles under a mask of smiles.

With a pitiful attempt at gayety, she faltered:

“You must learn not to be frightened at a woman’s fainting. It means
nothing but temporary weakness.”

“Are you sure of that?” he asked. “Because----” Then he paused.

“What?” she questioned.

“I feared you had read something in that paper that grieved or
frightened you,” he answered, remembering at the same time that when
she had that illness in California Mrs. Scruggs had asserted that
something she had read in a paper was the primary cause.

But Pansy denied that anything in the paper had affected her in the
least.

“How could it be so, when I had never been in Richmond, and knew no
one there?” she said. “Besides, I had but just taken the paper and had
read nothing but your sister’s death, when suddenly I felt my strength
leaving me, and I fell. Tell him, Phebe,” she said, looking at her
maid, “that it is a very common occurrence for ladies to faint.”

Phebe asserted that all fashionable ladies were given to fainting, and
his own experience bore him out in the fact. The only difference was
that he had never regarded Pansy in the light of a society lady. She
was a beautiful, natural child of nature, he had been proud to think.

She insisted on getting up to dress and to drive in the park.

“I want fresh air,” she said; and, looking at her pale cheeks and heavy
eyes, he thought so, too.

“Mind you don’t give me another such scare shortly,” he said, as he
went out to order the carriage, for they had taken a pretty house in
Park Lane for the season, and surrounded themselves with luxuries. They
had been going into society some little, but neither cared much for it.
He had seen enough of it to be blasé, and she was timid.

When they were driving along he said abruptly:

“I suppose we must make some plans for my poor niece. What do you say,
darling? Shall we go home and take care of Juliette?”

“Oh, must we go home? I am so happy here!” she cried.

“But I shall be obliged to go back and settle up my sister’s affairs,
Pansy.”

“Couldn’t you leave me, and come back when you had fixed everything?”
she inquired vaguely.

“But--Juliette?” he objected.

“Couldn’t you give her some money, and leave her there with--with some
of her friends?”

He looked in surprise at the girl who was usually so sweet and gentle.
Her words sounded heartless.

“How strangely you talk--as if you had taken a dislike to that poor
orphan girl whom you have never even seen,” he said severely.

“Oh, forgive me!” she cried, frightened at his displeasure. Nestling
closer to his side, she murmured: “It is naughty of me, I know, but I
can’t help feeling jealous of that girl you like so much. She will come
between us. We will never be as happy again as we were in this past
year.”

“Nonsense!” he answered; but he was secretly pleased at her jealousy,
although there was really no cause for it, as he hastened to assure
her. “I am only thinking of what people will say,” he explained. “I am
sure we should be happier without her, spoiled little beauty that she
is. But she has no relative but me, and if I desert her people will say
that it is all your fault. Do you realize this, my pet?”

Yes, she began to realize it with a sort of wonder. The fate of
Juliette Ives, her bitter enemy, lay in her hands to make or mar. She
knew that she could mold her noble husband to her will if she chose;
could make Juliette Ives’ life infinitely bitter and hard. For a moment
she was pleased with the thought, half tempted to use her power.

Then her better nature triumphed. She flung revenge to the winds.

“I cannot do it. I cannot be so mean,” she thought, with keen
self-scorn. “Poor soul! Why should I blame her? We both suffered
through his falsity, and now I will be her friend if she will let me.”

With all that she knew of Juliette, she did not fully comprehend the
girl’s ignoble soul. She pitied her, and, out of a generous impulse,
resolved to stand her friend.

“I will go back with you, Colonel Falconer, and I will try to be a true
friend to your orphan niece,” she said, believing that as his wife she
could fairly run the risk of a return to her old home.

“I look older now. No one will recognize me,” she decided confidently.



CHAPTER XVI. THE SAD RETURN.


In due course of time Juliette Ives received a kind letter from her
absent uncle, stating that he would return with his wife to Richmond
within the month.

  “You may rest assured, my dear girl, that I intend to act fairly
  by you,” he wrote. “Of course I cannot leave you my fortune, as
  I expected to do if I died single; but you shall receive a fair
  portion of it, so you need not consider yourself penniless. I will
  also pay your mother’s debts. For the rest, your home will be with
  us. My charming wife, who is even younger than yourself, will be
  your warmest friend if you show any disposition toward friendship.
  I inferred from your letter--in which you neglected to send Mrs.
  Falconer a single kind message--that you seriously resented my
  marriage. Of course you understand that my young wife is to be
  treated with all respect and consideration. While you have a strong
  claim on my love and kindness, she has a stronger one, which you
  must never for an instant forget. But I need hardly caution you on
  these points, as your own good sense will sufficiently instruct you.
  Besides, I expect that you will at once fall in love with Pansy’s
  sweet disposition and lovely face.”

“Pansy--Pansy!” Miss Ives muttered sharply, as she flung the obnoxious
letter on the floor. “So that is her name! Strange that, as that
name once came between me and love, it should now come between me and
fortune. Why, if I had not hated her already, I should loathe her for
that name!”

She was alone in the spacious and elegant parlor of Colonel Falconer’s
elegant residence on Franklin Street. She wore deep, lusterless black
that set off her delicate blond beauty to great advantage, and she
moved with the air of some princess, so proud was her step, so haughty
the curve of her white throat.

“It is going to be war to the knife between us--I foresee that,” she
muttered hoarsely. “I mean to make her life as disagreeable as I can,
out of revenge for the evil she has wrought for me. Yes, she shall not
sleep upon a bed of roses in this house! I shall be as disrespectful
as I please. They dare not turn me out of the house for fear of people
talking, as I am his own niece.”

A few days later she received a telegram from New York, stating that
Colonel Falconer and wife had arrived in that city, would remain there
a week, and then come on to Richmond.

Pansy had persuaded her husband to remain in New York and show her the
sights of the great city. At heart she cared little for it, but it
served as a pretext to delay for a little her return to her old home,
and to the memories that would crowd upon her there.

But at last the time was over, and no further pretext could delay her
going. Pale and heartsick, she was standing on the steamer’s deck
beside her husband while they rounded the last curve of James River,
that brought picturesque Libby Hill into full view, with all its
bittersweet memories.

It was three years and a half since she had crouched on yonder hill, a
forlorn little figure with wet eyes and a pale, pale face, watching the
steamer bearing away her young husband on that mission which he said
was to make him rich enough to claim the bride he had wedded in secret.
How it all rushed over her again as she stood there by the side of her
proud, rich husband, and listened mechanically as he pointed out with
pride and enthusiasm the beauties of the river and the land.

“How glad I am to be in Virginia again!” he exclaimed; but Pansy’s
smile was sadder than tears.

Juliette had sent the family carriage, with its high-stepping bay
horses, to meet them, and soon they were borne swiftly toward their
home; but while Colonel Falconer’s thoughts went toward Franklin Street
and its aristocratic environments, his fair young bride was thinking of
the humble house on Church Hill, where her mother was mourning the loss
of her youngest born--the household pet.

“Oh, mother, mother, mother, if only I dared go to you in your sorrow!”
was the cry of her heart.

But she knew that she must remain dead to that beloved mother. There
was her husband and her position to be considered, and there was
Willie, who had sworn in his wrath to kill the sister who had brought
disgrace on a respectable family. Her own safety, if nothing else,
demanded silence.

“Here we are, my darling, at home!” exclaimed Colonel Falconer’s voice,
seeming to come from far away, so intently had she been brooding over
her sorrows.

She glanced out, and saw the sunset gleams lighting up, like
jewels, the windows of an old-fashioned red brick mansion, set in
a pretty green lawn studded with shrubbery and flowers. He looked
up at the broad porch, guarded by two lions, and said, in a tone of
disappointment:

“Juliette is too dignified to come out on the porch to welcome us home.
She will be waiting in the hall.”

He led his lovely bride up the steps, and, with a strong effort of
will, Pansy threw off her agitation and braced herself to meet Juliette
Ives with pride and dignity equal to her own.



CHAPTER XVII. A DRAMATIC MEETING.


Yes, Juliette was waiting in the hall.

The day was warm, and she wore a black dress, rich in quality, but of
a soft, diaphanous material, through which her neck and arms gleamed
snowy white. Her golden hair was arranged so as to make the very most
of its beauty. She wished to overawe her uncle’s wife, if possible,
with her dignity and beauty.

The door opened, and as soon as Colonel Falconer appeared she rushed to
his arms with theatrical effect. He returned her kiss, and disengaged
himself as soon as possible from her embrace, that he might present her
to the beautiful creature waiting in the background:

“My wife, Juliette.”

Juliette looked, and saw a figure of medium height, but so exquisitely
slender, though rounded, that it looked taller. It was clothed in a
Parisian suit of dove gray, and from under the demure little bonnet
looked the loveliest face in the world--sweet yet spirited, with
exquisite features, dazzling complexion, and eyes of purplish blue
under lovely curling lashes, dark as night.

But what was it that made Juliette stare in wonder and gasp in fear?
She caught her uncle’s arm, and he felt her trembling from head to foot.

“Juliette, my poor girl, this meeting has unnerved you,” he exclaimed
pityingly, and Pansy advanced, as if to offer assistance, but was
instantly repulsed, Juliette flinging out a frantic arm to keep her off.

“Keep back, keep back! Do not come near me with that face!” she hissed
angrily; and Pansy looked at her husband in cold amazement.

“Has Miss Ives gone suddenly mad?” she demanded haughtily, and at the
sound of her voice, so cold yet silvery sweet, Juliette shrank closer
to her uncle, crying out:

“I am not mad, uncle, but I shall be soon if you do not take away that
ghost! Oh, that face, that voice! They have been drowned almost three
years, and now they rise to haunt me from their watery grave!”

She began to scream with actual terror, bringing the housekeeper and
several servants to the scene. Her uncle caught her in his arms and
carried her into the parlor, saying to Pansy over his shoulder:

“Keep out of sight a few moments, dear, and I will bring her to her
senses. She has evidently been startled by your likeness to some one
she has known.”

Pansy sat down just inside the parlor door, which she carefully closed,
thus shutting out the gaping servants. Colonel Falconer set himself to
the task of quieting his hysterical niece.

Believing herself alone with him, she soon grew calmer, and asked:

“Oh, uncle, where did you find that girl? I thought she was dead!”

“Of whom does she remind you, dear?” he asked soothingly.

Shivering with terror, she replied:

“Of Pansy Laurens, the girl who made all the trouble between Norman and
myself. You know, it was thought she drowned herself, but now I can no
longer believe it, for surely this is no other than Pansy Laurens!”

Pansy sat motionless, and heard her husband saying sternly:

“You will oblige me, Juliette, by never making such foolish remarks
again. I never saw Pansy Laurens; but if my wife resembles her, that
is nothing but a chance likeness. Mrs. Falconer was a Miss Wilcox, of
Louisville, and has never been in Richmond until to-day.”

“Oh, uncle, are you sure? For indeed she frightened me with her
awful likeness, although I believe she is prettier than that Laurens
creature,” gasped Juliette.

“Prettier--well, I should say so! My wife is the loveliest creature on
earth!” exclaimed the jovial colonel.

But Juliette, still shivering, sighed:

“How can I live in the same house with that face and voice?”



CHAPTER XVIII. A FALSE SMILE.


Colonel Falconer began to grow angry at Juliette’s foolishness, as he
called it to himself. Drawing back from her, he said stiffly:

“If you cannot live in the same house with my wife, Juliette, you are
quite at liberty to seek a boarding house anywhere you choose, and I
will pay your board and furnish you pin money.”

Juliette sprang upright in a perfect fury, shrieking out:

“You are planning to get rid of me already!”

Before the poor, badgered man could reply, Pansy came gliding forward,
and said sweetly:

“Perhaps Miss Ives would prefer for us to go away, and leave her in
possession of the house. If so, I am perfectly willing to do so, as I
fear we shall not get on together, judging from what I have already
seen of her disposition toward me.”

She hoped that Juliette would take her at her word, and that by this
means she would be enabled to leave this once dear, now dreaded, city.
She was frightened, too, at Juliette’s recognition of her, and foresaw
trouble if she remained.

But Juliette was startled at her uncle’s proposition, and she began
to come to her senses. She remembered that but for his liberality she
must be a beggar, and she dared not try him too far. Summoning a false,
sweet smile to her lips, she turned to him, and exclaimed:

“Dear uncle, forgive me. I fear I have been acting very foolishly. Of
course, I do not want to go away from the only relative I have in the
world, now that poor mamma is dead. I love you too well to leave you,
or to drive you from me. And, indeed, I was preparing to welcome my new
aunt with affection, when her striking likeness so startled me that I
behaved ridiculously, I fear, on the impulse of the moment. You will
excuse me, Mrs. Falconer, will you not?” turning to Pansy and holding
out a hand sparkling with costly gems.

Pansy clasped the offered hand with one as cold as ice, even through
its tiny gray kid glove, as she replied:

“Certainly, Miss Ives, for I am anxious to be your friend, if you will
let me.”

“Oh, thank you! I shall only be too glad, for I had feared that a
beautiful young wife would prejudice my uncle against me, and I am
glad to find that it is not so,” exclaimed Juliette, with pretended
cordiality. Rising to her feet, she continued: “Excuse me one moment,
while I see if your rooms are in readiness.”

She ran hastily to her own apartment, where she secured a framed
photograph of Norman Wylde, which she placed conspicuously on the
mantel of Pansy’s room.

“I believe she is Pansy Laurens, and I shall prepare many a severe test
for her,” she muttered angrily, as she returned to the parlor and told
Pansy, with a show of friendliness, that her rooms were in readiness,
and she was ready to show them to her.

They walked side by side through the broad hall, with its Turkish
carpet, statuary in niches, and stands of blooming flowers, up the
broad stairway to a suite of beautiful rooms in cream and scarlet.

“I hope you will like these rooms. Mamma had them furnished over but
a few months ago. Mine are like these, only in blue,” said Juliette,
with a patronizing air that at once aroused a teasing mood in Pansy,
and she exclaimed:

“Then I ought to have had your rooms instead of these, for blue is my
color, too!”

She saw a frown contract Juliette’s eyebrows, but she took no notice,
and walked over to the mantel, where the first thing she saw was the
handsome face of Norman Wylde smiling on her from an easel frame. It
gave her a start, but she had nerved herself to meet even the original
in this house, and now she merely lifted her arm to take up a piece of
bric-a-brac and examine it more closely, when the hanging sleeve of her
light gray wrap caught the top of the small easel, and it was instantly
hurled to the floor.

“Oh, what have I broken?” she cried, in pretended dismay. And Juliette
came forward to gather up the fragments.

“The easel is broken, but the photograph is unhurt. See,” she said,
holding it up before Pansy’s eyes and watching her closely; but Pansy
glanced at it with the careless interest of a stranger.

“What a handsome young man!” she said. “Is he one of your admirers,
Miss Ives?”

“I was once engaged to him,” Juliette answered. “I will take it away,”
she added, hurrying out of the room to conceal her chagrin at the
failure of her first test.

She could not decide whether the accident had been a real one or not.
Pansy had carried it out with such perfect ease that she began to
falter in her belief that this was Pansy Laurens.

“I may possibly be mistaken, but the likeness is so startling that I
shall test her in every way,” she decided.

The next morning Pansy appeared at their late breakfast in such an
exquisite and becoming morning gown that Juliette could not repress her
admiration, in spite of the anger with which she saw her uncle’s wife
take her place in front of the coffee urn.

“I thought you would be too tired to pour coffee this first morning,”
she said, almost angrily.

“Oh, no, indeed. I feel quite well, thank you,” was the bright reply,
and, as her white hands fluttered like birds over the china and silver,
she continued: “Colonel Falconer, I hope you are going to take me for
a long drive to-day so that I may see some of the beauties of your
historic Richmond.”

“Just what I was thinking of, my love,” said her husband. “You will
join us, will you not, Juliette?”

“Gladly,” she replied, thinking that she would thereby have another
opportunity of testing Pansy’s identity.

After breakfast Pansy invited her to come upstairs, where her maid was
unpacking her trunks, saying that she had brought her some presents
from London.

“Of course, as I had never seen you, I could not have decided what
would be most becoming to you had not my husband assisted me with a
description of your style and tastes,” she said. And when Juliette saw
the beautiful gifts that had been chosen for her she could not help
being pleased, both with the taste and generosity displayed by Pansy,
whom she thanked quite prettily, saying:

“I did you an injustice, feeling jealous of uncle’s love for you, when
all the time you were planning these pleasant surprises for me.”

Pansy hardly knew whether to trust these sweet protestations or not.
She would have liked to be at peace with Juliette Ives, but she could
not help distrusting her, and she resolved to watch her closely before
she quite discarded her distrust.

Juliette lay lazily back in a great crimson chair and watched Phebe,
the maid, unpacking Pansy’s beautiful clothes. She was obliged to own
that she had never seen such a magnificent trousseau as that with which
Colonel Falconer had provided his lovely bride.

“You are a woman to be envied, Mrs. Falconer,” she said; and Pansy
sighed faintly, although Juliette could not have told whether the sigh
meant supreme content or some hidden sorrow.

“She does not look as if she had always been really happy. There are
pensive curves about her lips when she is not smiling, and now and then
her eyes look anxious,” the girl decided.

In the afternoon an elegant open barouche took the three out riding,
and Colonel Falconer felt very proud of his beautiful wife and almost
equally beautiful niece, in their carriage costumes.

It was a lovely May day, and the city presented its best appearance
under a blue, smiling sky, which every Virginian believed as fair as
that of Italy. They rode out upon the popular Grove Road, then the
most fashionable drive in the city, and to that beautiful place, the
New Reservoir, with its bright waters glittering in the sun. Pansy
exclaimed with delight at the miniature lake, with the water lilies
fringing the green banks, and the little boats rocking on its breast.

Then the beautiful cemetery of Hollywood, with its magnificent monument
to the Confederate dead, was the next point of interest. Colonel
Falconer then gave the command to drive through the principal parks and
streets.

“Do not forget Seventh Street,” Juliette whispered to the driver, and
when they were rolling along before an immense structure on that street
she said: “That building, Mrs. Falconer, is the great tobacco factory
of Arnell & Grey. They employ an immense number of girls and women to
work for them--twelve hundred at least, I am told. Would you not like
to go through the factory? I presume it would furnish some interesting
sights to one unfamiliar with our Southern institutions.”

“I dare say it would, but unfortunately the smell of tobacco always
makes me very ill. Colonel Falconer, cannot we drive faster, so as to
escape this unpleasant odor?” exclaimed Pansy. He saw that her face had
certainly grown very pale, while her eyes were half closed. He directed
the driver to hasten out of the neighborhood.

“I am sorry it sickened you, but the odor was strong,” said Juliette.
“I do not know how those poor girls endure it. Their very clothing must
be impregnated with the disagreeable odor. But perhaps they do not mind
it like you and I, Mrs. Falconer--useless, fine ladies that we are.”

Mrs. Falconer’s blue eyes flashed, and the color rushed back into her
pale cheeks. She answered, with a flash of girlish spirit:

“You and I, Miss Ives, are made of the same clay as those factory
girls. We are more fortunate, that is all.”

“Goodness, Uncle Falconer, I hope your wife isn’t a socialist!”
exclaimed Juliette, shrugging her shoulders.

He frowned, and answered:

“My wife is an angel, Juliette, and has the kindest, tenderest heart
in the world. I’m glad to hear her speak up for our Richmond working
girls. I have the greatest respect for them all, as well as sympathy
for the poverty that makes their lot in life so hard. I know also that
many of them are from good families that were reduced to poverty by the
late war.”

Juliette turned her back on him impatiently, and addressed herself to
Pansy:

“You remember how foolishly I behaved last night, taking you for a girl
that disgraced her family and drowned herself three years ago?”

“Yes,” Pansy answered coldly.

“Well, she was a tobacco-factory girl, and worked at Arnell & Grey’s.
Her name was Pansy Laurens--similarity in names, as well as faces,
you see. Your name is Pansy, too, isn’t it? She was a low, designing
creature, and, by her boldness, caused a rupture between my betrothed
and myself, over which he grieves to this day.”



CHAPTER XIX. A POISONED LIFE.


Bravely as Pansy carried off everything, she began to fear that her
life with Juliette Ives would never be one of friendship or peace, for
the girl seemed to bristle at all points with poisoned arrows for her
uncle’s wife.

Not that Juliette was outwardly repellent. She had false, sweet smiles
in plenty for Pansy; but she had also the sharpest claws beneath her
silky fur. She lost no opportunity of wounding, when she could do so
with impunity.

A week passed away, and several of the best families in the city had
called upon Colonel Falconer and his wife. None saw her but to praise
her wonderful beauty and her graceful ease of manner; although they had
gathered from Juliette that her origin was obscure, they decided that
she must certainly have been used to good society, and they made due
allowance when Juliette sneered for her disappointment in losing her
uncle’s money.

But the supreme trial of all had not fallen on her yet. Norman Wylde
had not called, although Juliette had given several intimations that he
would do so soon. Sometimes Pansy resolved that she would not see him,
but then that course would be sure to excite remark. The meeting must
take place some time, and she made up her mind at last that she would
face it without a falter.

“I despise him, but I will treat him with the same courtesy that I do
others, that none may suspect what lies hidden beneath the surface,”
she thought.

She had been home something more than a week when Colonel Falconer told
her one morning, with a tender caress, that he should have to leave her
to her own devices, or to Juliette’s society, all day, as he would have
to spend some hours with his lawyers, settling up his sister’s affairs.

“I have a new book. I will interest myself in that,” she replied,
returning his kiss in her gentle, affectionate way.

He went away, and, lest Juliette should think her unsociable, she took
her book into the parlor. It was a warm day, and she wore a lovely
morning dress, all white embroidery and lace, with fluttering loops
of blue ribbons. Her lovely dark hair was drawn into a loose coil on
top of her head, and some curling locks strayed prettily over her white
forehead.

“How pretty you are in that white wrapper, Mrs. Falconer. I do not see
how such a plain old fellow as my uncle ever induced a beautiful young
girl like you to marry him. But, then, these rich old fellows can marry
any one they choose!” exclaimed Juliette.

“I do not consider Colonel Falconer old,” Pansy answered resentfully,
but further words were prevented by the loud ringing of the doorbell.

Juliette sat upright, with a gleam of expectancy in her pale-blue eyes,
and the next moment a servant appeared at the door, saying that a man
wished to see Mrs. Falconer a few moments.

“Show him in here. It is no doubt some message from uncle,” quickly
exclaimed Juliette.

Instantly there darted into Pansy’s mind a quick suspicion:

“She has laid another trap for me.”

And she braced herself to bear anything unflinchingly.

The door opened again, and Mr. Finley, the grocer, her hated
stepfather, entered the room.

Pansy grew pale, but, still holding her book, she arose in a stately
way, fixing on the intruder a cold glance of inquiry.

Mr. Finley, coming in from the outer daylight into the semigloom of the
parlor, did not at first see very clearly. He bowed profoundly to both
ladies, in an awkward way, and began to speak briskly:

“Mrs. Falconer, I am a grocer, and enjoyed the custom and confidence
of the late Mrs. Ives. I have called to solicit----” He stopped and
stared. The beautiful face looking at him struck him with fear and
terror.

He made a retrograde movement toward the door, keeping his bewildered
eyes on her face, and then he caught a glance from Juliette’s eyes that
suddenly loosened his tongue.

He stopped short, exclaiming:

“Heavens, I can’t be mistaken! It--is--she! Mrs. Falconer, excuse me,
please, but are you not my missing stepdaughter, Pansy Laurens?”

A gay little laugh trilled over Pansy’s lips as she blandly assured him
that she had never seen him before in her life, that her maiden name
was Miss Wilcox, and that she was a native of Louisville.

“This is the second time I’ve been told of my likeness to Pansy
Laurens. It is a coincidence, nothing more. Such things often happen,”
she observed carelessly. “By the way, you called to solicit custom for
your business, I believe. You may leave your card, and I will refer it
to my husband.”

Thus coolly dismissed, and quite ignoring the request for his card, Mr.
Finley stumbled out, with a fixed conviction in his mind that Pansy
Laurens had never been drowned at all, but had married this rich man
and come back to triumph over them all.

He understood now why Juliette had sent him that little note, saying
that her uncle’s wife would be glad to have him call, as she wished to
make arrangements with him about supplying the family groceries.

“She recognized her, and wished for me to do so, unaided by any hint
from her,” he thought and wondered: “What ought I to do about it?
I hope I shall see Miss Ives soon, for this discovery places a mine
of gold in my reach, and I must speedily find out in what way I am
to make the most of it. Miss Ives is poor now, and Norman Wylde is
comparatively so, as he will have no money until his father dies. I do
not know which I should blackmail--Falconer or his wife.”



CHAPTER XX. AN EVENING OF SUSPENSE.


When Pansy went to dress for dinner she was so particular that the maid
smiled, and thought:

“Her husband has been gone all day, and she wishes to look her best
this evening.”

But Pansy, looking for Norman Wylde’s appearance every hour, was
anxious to appear as beautiful as possible in the eyes of the man who
had wronged her so deeply.

A lovely dress of cream-colored mull and Valenciennes lace was donned.
The sleeves were short, and the bodice was a low V neck. She wore no
ornaments, except a diamond locket on the black velvet band at her
throat and a bunch of creamy-white roses at her slender waist. Thus
attired, she was so dazzlingly lovely when she descended to the parlor
that Juliette fairly hated her, and could scarcely keep from saying so.

Colonel Falconer came in presently, with his kind, intelligent face
and fine military bearing, and was charmed with the beauty of the two
girls, for Juliette looked her best in a dress of black net with pearl
jewelry.

“It is a pity for so much loveliness to be wasted on an old fellow like
me. I hope we shall have some callers after dinner,” he said gayly.

After dinner he begged Juliette to give them some music, but, with a
malicious glance at Pansy, she exclaimed:

“I do not like to touch the piano, as I am sure your wife plays ever so
much better than I do.”

Pansy smiled, and answered coolly:

“Then your musical attainments must be very superficial, indeed, Miss
Ives, for I only know enough of music to play my own accompaniments to
a few songs.”

“Then you will give us a song, won’t you, and I will play afterward?”
cried artful Juliette, thinking that here, at least, she could outshine
her uncle’s wife.

“Certainly,” Pansy answered carelessly, and moved toward the piano,
secure in her consciousness of an exquisitely sweet voice, which had
had careful culture when she was a simple schoolgirl, before her father
died.

Colonel Falconer leaned against the piano, with his back to the door,
and Juliette began to turn over the piles of music.

“Don’t trouble yourself. I will sing some little thing from memory,”
said Pansy.

Juliette flung herself into an easy-chair and listened with a sneer,
saying to herself:

“I would not try to play if I knew nothing but a few accompaniments.”

But when that low, sweet, thrilling voice broke the silence, she
started in wonder and delight, for she was intensely fond of music, and
Pansy’s touch and voice were both exquisite.

No one noticed that the door had opened to admit visitors, who paused
uncertainly on the threshold, to listen, too, for all were absorbed in
the singer.

At last the white hands dropped from the piano keys, the thrilling
voice became silent. Touched in spite of herself, Juliette said softly:

“Oh, how sweet and sad! You have brought tears to my eyes, Mrs.
Falconer.”

Before Pansy could reply, all three became aware that visitors were
advancing into the room.

“Oh, Mrs. Wylde, I am so glad to see you--and you, too, Rosalind. Oh,
Judge Wylde, it was so kind of you and Norman to come!” rattled quickly
from Juliette’s lips, as she hastened to welcome the newcomers.

Colonel Falconer also greeted the visitors as if they were old friends,
and hastened to present his wife.

She, the poor little factory girl whom they had scorned, stood by her
husband’s side like a queen, and greeted his friends with a calm and
stately dignity that made a profound impression. She glanced only
slightly at Norman Wylde, or she would have seen that he was terribly
agitated. When their hands touched each other both were cold as ice.

When all were seated, Pansy saw that he had retreated to a distant
corner, and, as the conversation proceeded, he took little or no part
in it. He was almost stricken speechless by her marvelous likeness
to one he had loved and lost, and, but for the interval for thought
afforded him while she was singing, he could not have preserved his
calmness; he must have spoken out on the spur of the moment, and
claimed her, as Mr. Finley had done, as Pansy Laurens.

When he had first beheld the beautiful face in profile from the door
his senses had almost reeled; but before her song ceased he had
persuaded himself that he was mistaken in thinking her the counterpart
of Pansy. She was more beautiful, more distinguished-looking. Pansy
had been very shy and bashful, but this girl held her small head high.
There was a likeness--a great one--but nothing more. One was the
wayside rose, the other the cultivated flower.

From his distant seat he watched the lovely face and form with a
throbbing heart. How the rich, creamy-hued robe and diamond locket set
off the flowerlike face, with its background of dark, rippling hair.
The beautiful white hands played with some rose petals she had plucked
from her belt, and he noticed how small they were, with pink palms and
finger tips, dimpled at the joint, like a child’s. Pansy had had just
such dainty hands, although she was only a working girl.

“I wish I had not come,” he thought, with bitter pain. “Mrs. Falconer’s
face has brought everything back. Oh, how am I to bear it? Does
Juliette see the likeness, I wonder? Surely not, or else she could
scarcely endure to be haunted so by the image of one she hated.”

Pansy, on her part, felt a bitter triumph in seeing that he took such
slight notice of Juliette. Surely he did not care for her, else his
eyes would have wandered to her face sometimes, for it was plain to be
seen that she worshiped him.

“He does not care for her,” Pansy said to herself, as she saw how
carelessly he answered the remarks Juliette addressed to him. “He has a
fickle heart.”

And she gazed with silent admiration at her noble husband, who loved
her so devotedly, and who had not been too proud to marry a simple
working girl and lift her to his own station in life. Although she did
not love him in a romantic fashion, she admired his noble, manly nature
more and more daily.

And she found a bitter satisfaction in seeing that her betrayer did not
look so gay and debonair as in the past. He was certainly altered; his
face was pale and grave, his eyes were sad and serious.



CHAPTER XXI. A RETURN CALL.


Something more than a week after the Wyldes had called upon the
Falconers, Juliette suggested, one day, that it was time that they
should return the call.

“You and Pansy can do so this afternoon,” Colonel Falconer replied. “As
for me, I cannot spare a day from those lawyers until I get through my
business, for I am hurrying all I can, that I may take my family away
from the city before the heated term sets in.”

“Then we will call to-day, and we can then find out where they intend
to summer, for I should like to go to the same place,” exclaimed
Juliette.

So at noon that day they found themselves ringing the doorbell at a
residence on Grace Street, quite as elegant as the one they had left.
They were shown into an elegant and tasteful drawing-room, and told
that the ladies would be down directly.

Pansy sat silent, with her eyes fixed on the door, when suddenly it was
pushed ajar by a dimpled little hand, and the figure of a child became
partly visible--a beautiful child, of perhaps three years old. The
little fellow was simply clothed, in a white Mother Hubbard slip, and
his big, dark eyes looked fearlessly at the two ladies.

Pansy’s heart thrilled strangely at sight of the child, for there was
something in his face that suggested Norman Wylde. Holding out her
hands, she cried coaxingly:

“Come here, you pretty little darling!”

The child hesitated a moment, then pattered lightly across the carpet
with his little bare feet to her side. She placed him on her knee, and,
clasping him in her arms, kissed the pretty, rosy face repeatedly.

“What is your name, dear?” she asked.

“Pet!” he replied, while Juliette looked on coldly.

Apparently the child quite reciprocated the fancy Mrs. Falconer had
shown for him. While she smoothed his sunny curls with loving hands, he
patted her cheek tenderly, and cooed:

“Pretty yady, pretty yady!”

Suddenly the door unclosed, admitting Mrs. Wylde, the stately matron,
and her handsome daughter, Rosalind. They frowned at sight of the
pretty child, and, after exchanging greetings with their guests,
Rosalind exclaimed sharply:

“What are you doing here, Pet? Get down this instant, and go away.”

But, to her astonishment, the little one clung to Pansy, and cried out
rebelliously:

“No, no, me stay ’ith pretty yady!”

“The little monkey! He never offered to disobey me before,” exclaimed
Rosalind, frowning, and she removed him by force from Pansy’s lap, for
he screamed and struggled to stay.

“Oh, please let me keep him. I love children!” exclaimed Pansy
pleadingly; but just here Mrs. Wylde chimed in:

“You do not quite understand, Mrs. Falconer. The child belongs to my
housekeeper, who adopted him in infancy. She has her orders to keep
him in her own part of the house, but occasionally he slips away and
intrudes upon us, although this is the first time he has ever ventured
into the drawing-room.”

“It was my fault. I called him in when I saw him peeping in at the
door. He was such a lovely little child, and I thought he belonged
to you,” said Pansy, as her yearning eyes followed Rosalind, who was
leading the sobbing child from the room.

“He is a very pretty child, and usually a very good-tempered,
affectionate one,” Mrs. Wylde acknowledged. “This is the first time
I ever saw him display any temper. Indeed, I have felt myself on the
verge of falling in love with the little creature often, only I would
not allow myself to do so, being convinced that he must be a child of
shame.”



CHAPTER XXII. A BEAUTIFUL CHILD.


“A child of shame!” Pansy echoed, and a wave of hot color rushed over
her face as she remembered the little child that had died before its
young mother ever saw its face.

“Yes,” answered the stately lady, rather coldly. “He is a foundling,
and was left on our steps almost three years ago. We would have sent it
to the almshouse, but our old housekeeper, who has been with us so many
years that we like to indulge her some, took a fancy to the little one,
and begged to keep it.”

“It is a beautiful little child. I could not help falling in love with
it,” said Pansy earnestly, while Juliette sneered:

“It is a pity you have not a child of your own to love!”

“I wish I had,” Pansy answered. “I am very fond of children.” And she
wished within herself that she could have little Pet to carry home with
her, for a wild suspicion was growing up in her heart: What if this
were her own child?

Her mother had told her that her child had died, but perhaps she had
deceived her. Perhaps Mr. Finley, whom she had always disliked and
distrusted, had taken the child away and forced her mother to utter
that falsehood. What more natural than that he should have placed it on
the threshold of the Wylde mansion?

Wild suspicion grew almost into agonized certainty as she recalled the
startling likeness of the child to Norman Wylde.

“Is it possible that his family can fail to see the likeness in his
face?” she wondered, and, while she held with difficulty her part in
the conversation going forward over the merits of different summer
resorts, she was thinking wildly:

“I do not believe now that my baby died. This child, with Norman’s
eyes, belongs to me. My heart claimed him the moment he appeared at the
door. And he was fond of me, too. He struggled so hard to get back to
me when Rosalind forced him away. Oh, I must manage somehow to see that
old housekeeper soon, and find out all that I can about little Pet.”

“I think I shall go to White Sulphur Springs,” said Mrs. Wylde. “Have
you decided where you shall go, Mrs. Falconer?”

“No, I cannot come to a decision, so I shall leave it to my husband,”
replied Pansy.

“Oh, then you must go to White Sulphur! It is charming there,” cried
Juliette, who wanted to go wherever the Wyldes went.

“One place will please me quite as well as another,” Pansy replied
indifferently; and when they took their leave it was quite understood
that the Wyldes and the Falconers were to form a party for the springs
as soon as possible.

“But,” said dark-eyed Rosalind to her mother, “Juliette is going to be
disappointed, for, of course, she thinks Norman is going with us.”

“Norman must go. It is quite foolish, his being so stiff with us, and
resenting things that were only done for his good,” Mrs. Wylde replied,
in a displeased tone.

When Pansy and Juliette were riding home, the latter observed:

“Mrs. Falconer, did you notice what a strong resemblance that foundling
child had to Norman Wylde?”

Pansy looked at her with a startled air, and answered:

“You know I’ve only seen Norman Wylde once, and can’t really recall his
features exactly. Does the child really resemble him? And, if so, what
does it mean?”

“Norman Wylde has lived a very fast life, you know,” Juliette
answered. “I have long suspected that the child is his own, flung
upon his doorstep in desperation by some one of his victims. Perhaps
he suspects, perhaps he does not--but I feel almost certain of its
parentage.”

“And the family?” Pansy asked faintly.

“I do not believe they suspect anything. If they did, they would not
permit it to be kept beneath their roof. They would be perfectly
furious,” replied Juliette, with an air of certainty, and watching
Pansy closely for some signs of emotion.

But the beautiful girl seemed to grow suddenly weary of the subject,
for she said:

“I wonder if my trousseau will do for the White Sulphur, or if I ought
to order anything new?”

“You will not need a new thing, nor shall I, as I am in mourning, and
cannot dance this season,” replied Juliette.

As their carriage rolled along Grace Street, they saw Norman Wylde
among the pedestrians on the pavement. He lifted his hat, and passed on
without stopping, to the chagrin of Juliette, who hoped he would stop
and chat with her a while.

Her conscience did not reproach her for the falsehoods she had uttered
against his fair fame, although she knew that there was not a purer,
more high-minded young man in the whole city. But while she was still
uncertain as to the identity of her uncle’s wife, it suited her best
to pretend that Norman Wylde was dissolute and guilty. Although she
suspected that little Pet was the child of Pansy Laurens, she was not
certain, and she did not wish Mrs. Falconer to believe it.

“She will, if she is really Pansy Laurens, hate him more if she
believes that the child is some other woman’s,” she thought shrewdly,
and smiled when she saw the signs of trouble that Pansy could not
wholly disguise on her fair face.

Poor Pansy! Her heart was well-nigh breaking, and when she reached
home she feigned a headache, that she might have an excuse for shutting
herself up in her own room to think over the events of to-day, which
had aroused suspicions never to be laid again until they were either
confirmed or proved baseless. The dark eyes of the little child had
aroused the mother’s heart within her breast, and it ached with a
bitter yearning.

“Oh, if my baby did not die, they were cruel and wicked to deceive me,
to cheat me out of its love all these years! But only let me find out
if that child is mine, and I will have it--I will!” she sobbed wildly,
in a mood of passionate recklessness.

But suddenly she heard her husband’s voice in the hall, and shivered.

“Oh, what am I talking of? How dare I claim my child in the face of
everything that is against me?” she moaned bitterly; and just then
Colonel Falconer entered, with a face full of anxiety.

“They told me you had a headache. Can I do anything for you, my
darling?” he asked tenderly.

“Only love me and pity me,” the girl answered, almost despairingly, out
of her hidden sorrow.

He was alarmed at her tone, and feared she was suffering greatly.

“Let me send for a physician,” he urged.

“No, no, I do not need medicine--only rest and quiet,” she pleaded,
with a feeling of remorse in her heart that she could not love him
better--he was so good and true.

But since she had come back to Richmond, she was conscious that there
was less chance than ever for her to love her husband in the ardent
fashion to which he had the best claim. Her affection for him was so
calm, so friendly, only, while, to her dismay, all her old madness had
returned at the first sight of Norman Wylde’s handsome face.

“Oh what a tyrant love is!” she sighed bitterly. “I thought I hated
him--I know I ought to hate him--yet his face haunts me as it did in
those old days when I loved him first. I dream of him by night, and I
think of him by day, in spite of every endeavor to forget him. Heaven
help me, for I am wretched!”

Days passed, and Pansy found some relief from the haunting image of
Norman Wylde in thinking of the little child that she firmly believed
to be her own. She struck up a great intimacy with the Wyldes in hopes
of seeing the little one more frequently; but she was disappointed.

Apparently the housekeeper had received strict orders, for Pet’s black
eyes were no longer to be seen laughing around the drawing-room door,
nor his footsteps heard pattering through the halls. There was a sunny
plot of grass in the back yard where he played all day now, except when
he was in that part of the house allotted to the housekeeper.

But he had never forgotten the “pretty yady,” and he often asked Mrs.
Meade, the housekeeper, about her, prattling so sweetly that the good
old woman grew quite curious, and at last asked Mrs. Wylde about Mrs.
Falconer.

“Yes, she is very beautiful--the most beautiful woman I ever saw,” Mrs.
Wylde admitted. “She took quite a fancy to Pet, and admitted she was
fond of children.”

“He is always talking about her. I never knew him so fond of any one
before,” said Mrs. Meade. “Did you say she came from California, ma’am?”

“Colonel Falconer married her in California, but she is a native of
Kentucky, and was never in Richmond until now,” was the reply, which,
if Mrs. Meade had harbored any suspicion, at once dissipated.

Still she cherished a desire to see the woman who had been so kind to
her little adopted child as to win its warm little heart.

“I’d like to thank her for noticing the poor, forsaken little lamb,”
she said to herself. “No one ever shows it any kindness, except Mr.
Norman, and Heaven knows he ought to love it, for I firmly believe he
is the father, though whether he suspects it or not, I can’t tell.
Anyway, he’s fond of it, and kind to it.”



CHAPTER XXIII. A DARING MOVE.


Fate helped Mrs. Meade to the accomplishment of her wish.

One day all the negro servants had leave of absence to attend a meeting
of some society very popular with all of their race, and there was no
one left to answer the doorbell but the housekeeper.

In the afternoon Mrs. Wylde and Rosalind went out to do some shopping,
and Mrs. Meade seated herself with Pet in the wide, cool hall, that she
might be within hearing of the bell.

“Ain’t you doin’ to take me on the Capitol Square dis even’?” queried
Pet.

“No, my precious, I can’t take you out to-day,” answered the kind old
woman, putting down her knitting to caress the beautiful boy, whose
sunny curls and bright black eyes were so dear to her heart.

“Den I wish dat pretty yady would tum adin,” exclaimed the child,
looking longingly at the front door.

At that moment there came a hurried, nervous peal at the doorbell.

Mrs. Falconer had been driving out alone when she saw Mrs. Wylde and
her daughter entering a store on Broad Street, and she almost instantly
left her carriage and directed the driver to wait for her, as she
desired to do some shopping.

Entering the same store, she bought a box of handkerchiefs, then,
slipping out quietly, she made her way on foot to Grace Street,
scarcely knowing what she meant to do, but thrilled by a wild longing
to see once more the lovely child that she believed was her own.

In the absence of the family, she believed that little Pet might
perhaps be permitted the freedom of the house. She might make some
pretext for entering the house and awaiting Mrs. Wylde’s return. Thus
she might catch a glimpse of the little one whose charms had won her
heart.

She rang the bell with a trembling hand, and, to her joy and amazement,
the first thing she saw when the door opened was little Pet, clinging
to the dress of the white-haired, kindly looking old woman who invited
her in.

“Pretty yady! pretty yady!” screamed the child, and those words
acquainted Mrs. Meade with the fact that Mrs. Falconer stood before her.

“Will you walk in, ma’am? The ladies are out shopping, but they may
come in at any minute,” she exclaimed eagerly, anxious that little Pet
should have a few minutes at least with the woman he loved so dearly.

Mrs. Falconer trailed her soft summer silk through the doorway, and
held out her hands to the eager child.

“Well, I will rest a few minutes, anyhow, as I walked from Broad Street
and feel quite tired,” she exclaimed, adding gayly: “Oh, how cool and
nice it is here in the hall. I will not go into the parlor, please.”

She sank down upon the broad antique sofa, and little Pet, as clean and
sweet as a rosebud, in his little white dress and slippers, climbed
into her lap and clasped his chubby arms about her neck. Mrs. Meade
closed and locked the door, and began to expostulate with him.

“Oh, please don’t scold him! Let him stay with me. I love children so
dearly!” exclaimed Pansy, pressing the child to her heart and kissing
him many times.

Then she looked up a little apprehensively at the old woman, asking
timidly:

“Are you--his--mother?”

“No, madam; he’s my adopted child. He was left at this door almost
three years ago, and I begged the family to let me keep the poor little
forsaken baby for my own. I’m only the housekeeper, ma’am, and the
child’s company for me,” explained Mrs. Meade, looking curiously into
the beautiful, agitated face before her and wondering if Mrs. Falconer
could possibly know anything of the child’s parentage, for the tender
interest she took in him seemed very strange.

“Can you remember what month it was when the child was left here?”
queried Pansy eagerly.

“It was on the night of the twenty-eighth of May, ma’am, and I feel
sure it wasn’t more than an hour old--a poor little deserted newborn
baby,” said Mrs. Meade, and Pansy sternly repressed a cry of joy as she
hid her startled face in the boy’s plump neck, pretending to bite him,
that she might hear his vociferous baby laughter.

“He is mine! It is just as I thought. I was deceived by my mother, and
my child stolen from me. Oh, what am I to do, for I feel that I cannot
live without him?” she thought wildly.

The little one clung to her, showering her face with kisses, and
filling Mrs. Meade with wonder, for he was usually very shy of
strangers.

“Would you like to see the clothes he wore when he came here?” she
asked, and went away, returning presently with a bundle, which she
unrolled before Pansy’s eyes.

“See this little linen shirt and gown, so neatly trimmed with crochet
edging, and this fine soft flannel petticoat,” she said; and Pansy
almost fainted when she saw the selfsame baby garments on which she had
worked, in silence and secrecy, so many nights when she was at home, a
wretched creature, looking forward with dread to her baby’s coming.

She wound her arms about the child, and said faintly:

“You ought to take good care of these things, for by their aid you
might be enabled to trace the child’s mother some time.”

But she flushed deeply when Mrs. Meade answered:

“I mean to take care of them, but I don’t know as I care to trace the
mother. She must be a hard-hearted creature, to abandon her baby like
she did.”

“Oh, don’t judge her so hardly, please. Perhaps--perhaps--it was
not her fault. They might have taken it from her,” exclaimed Pansy
pleadingly, then paused in dismay, for, by the sudden lighting up of
Mrs. Meade’s face, she saw that she had made a mistake in speaking so
impulsively. Anxious to remove any suspicion from the woman’s mind,
she went on apologetically: “Of course, the mother might have been
hard-hearted. There are plenty such women, but it does seem strange
that any one could desert such a beautiful child as this one.”

“He is beautiful, and as good and sweet as he is pretty,” said Mrs.
Meade warmly, and Pansy exclaimed, almost passionately:

“I wish he had been left at my door! I would certainly have adopted him
for my own. I love him dearly.”

“I ’ove oo!” cried little Pet, gazing into her beautiful face with
shining eyes, and she strained him close to her heart again, exclaiming:

“Oh, you sweet little darling!”

Mrs. Meade gazed on the pretty scene with wonder and suspicion, asking
herself why Mrs. Falconer and the child were so strongly attached to
each other. She knew that Norman Wylde had been in trouble several
years before on account of a pretty factory girl, who was reported to
have drowned herself, but she had never heard that there was a child
in the case. She wondered now if that unfortunate girl had looked like
Mrs. Falconer.

“I mean to find out,” she resolved, just as Pansy looked up and asked
pleadingly:

“Won’t you give me this child if my husband will allow me to adopt him?
I will be like a mother to him, educate him, bring him up to a noble
manhood, if he lives.”

“Would you like to go with the lady, and leave your poor old Meade,
my pet?” exclaimed the housekeeper, and the little one murmured a
delighted affirmative.

“You see!” cried Pansy triumphantly. “Now, may I have him?”

Mrs. Meade shook her head.

“Colonel Falconer would never permit you to have him,” she said.

“My husband has never refused a request of mine in our whole
acquaintance,” cried Pansy impatiently.

“But he would refuse this,” said Mrs. Meade. “You will have some
children of your own some time, Mrs. Falconer, then this poor little
one would be thrust aside. No, no--I could not part with him, even to
one who likes him as much as you do, dear lady.”

Pansy gazed at her with a grieved and baffled air. Her red under lip
quivered and tears started to her beautiful eyes. For a moment she
could not speak, so bitter was her disappointment; and Mrs. Meade
folded up the tiny garments in an embarrassed fashion, ashamed of
refusing the lady’s request, but feeling that she was acting for the
best.

Suddenly a bright thought came to Pansy.

“Mrs. Meade, I see that you love Pet too well to give him up,” she
said gently. “I don’t blame you, for I love him dearly myself. But
couldn’t you come and be my housekeeper? Then I could see him every
day.”

Mrs. Meade threw up her hands in dismay.

“Leave the Wyldes!” she cried. “Oh, my dear young lady, I’ve kept house
for them these twenty-five years, and to leave them now would be like
pulling up an old tree by the roots. I’m too old to be transplanted. I
should die.”

Pansy clasped the child close to her aching heart with a cry of despair
that she could not repress.

“Oh, my little darling, my little darling, I shall see you no more,
then! Fate is too strong for us,” she cried.

Mrs. Meade took off her spectacles and wiped the moisture of tears from
them. She was deeply touched by Pansy’s affection for Pet, and, after a
moment, she said significantly:

“Mrs. Falconer, I’m sorry to seem harsh and unkind, refusing to give
you the child, but I know you will forget it directly. While, as for
me, my heart is bound up in him, and I’ve always said that I’d never
give up my claim, except to some one who had a better right to him
than I have.”

Pansy glanced up, startled, and met the significant gaze of the kind
old eyes. She understood.

With a burning blush, she put the little one out of her arms and rose
to go.

“Then, of course, I can urge you no longer. Your claim is too
strong,” she said, trying to speak coldly, as a mask for her bitter
disappointment.

“As for not seeing Pet any more, Mrs. Falconer, if you care about it I
can make it easy enough for you to see him. I take him to the Capitol
Square every pleasant afternoon,” said Mrs. Meade; and then she asked
eagerly; “Won’t you come in the parlor and play the piano for Pet? He
loves music so dearly.”

“I ought to go this minute,” she said, but yielded to the tiny,
persuasive little fingers that clasped hers, and stayed almost an hour
longer, playing and singing for the delighted little one.

When she took leave she slipped a golden coin in the baby fingers.

“To buy candy,” she said, kissing him fondly, and promising to come to
the Capitol Square the next afternoon to see him. Then she tore herself
away, and Mrs. Meade had hard work to console Pet, who wept bitterly at
the parting.



CHAPTER XXIV. OLD LOVERS FACE TO FACE.


How strange it seemed to Pansy to be going again, after the lapse of
more than three years, to the Capitol Square to meet one whom she
loved, but whom she must see in secret because a cruel fate kept them
sundered in life, but one in heart. Then it was the father--now it was
the child.

While she was wondering how she was to get away from the lynx eyes of
her husband’s niece, Juliette came in to say that she would like to
have the phaëton for her own use that afternoon, if Mrs. Falconer was
not going out.

“One of my dearest friends, Miss Norwood, is just home from a long
visit in New York, and I would like so much to take her for a drive,”
she said.

“Pray do so. I shall not need the phaëton this afternoon,” Pansy
answered eagerly.

“You are not going out yourself?” Juliette asked.

“I don’t know. Should I do so, it will only be for a short walk.”

Juliette thanked her and hastened away.

“Colonel Falconer is busy with his lawyer, Juliette away, and the field
clear. I will go and see my child,” she thought gladly.

It was July, and the day was warm and sultry. Pansy dressed herself
simply, in a plain white dress and leghorn hat, and, taking a large
sun-shade in her hand, started for the Capitol Square.

Her heart throbbed painfully as she walked slowly along the old
familiar streets, thinking of those past days, so full of love and pain.

It was only four o’clock when she reached the square, and the nurses
and children were just beginning to come in. She looked everywhere, but
there was no sign of Mrs. Meade and little Pet.

“I am too early. I must sit down in some quiet, secluded spot and
wait,” she thought, and sought a shady seat on the slope of the hill
back of the Capitol building.

“It was here we sat that day when Norman told me he was going to
London,” she murmured sadly, and then she recoiled with a sudden cry:

“Oh!”

The quiet bench she sought was already occupied, and by Norman Wylde
himself.

She could scarcely repress a wild and passionate cry of pain and
reproach. As it was, she dared not trust herself, and turned to flee.

But Norman Wylde had been aroused from a deep abstraction by her low
exclamation of dismay, and, starting up, he confronted her, coming out
of such a mood that he for a moment fancied his lost love had come back
from the other world to comfort his sad heart. A glad cry came from his
lips:

“Pansy!”

That name arrested her footsteps. She paused, frightened, moveless. Had
he recognized her? Would he tax her with her identity?

“Pansy!” he repeated tenderly, and, although she trembled and grew
faint at the passion in his voice, it came to her suddenly that she
must make some defense for herself. She, the honored wife of the proud
Colonel Falconer, must never own herself to be that Pansy Laurens whom
the man before her had deceived and betrayed. She would be brave and
proud for her husband’s sake, as well as for her own.

Steeling her heart and her nerves as well as she could, she turned
toward him, saying coldly:

“It is quite true, Mr. Wylde, that my name is Pansy, but as you and I
have never met but once before to-day, it seems to me that I should be
Mrs. Falconer to you.”

Norman Wylde could only stare for a moment with bewildered eyes at the
lovely speaker, and mutter helplessly:

“Mrs. Falconer!”

“Yes,” she replied coldly, and suddenly he struck his hand against his
forehead, exclaiming:

“I am a fool, a madman! Madam, pardon me. I--I--was mistaken.” Then,
seeing that she lingered, he added, with an imploring gesture: “Will
you not sit down here for one moment and let me explain?”

She knew quite well that she ought not to stay, but she could not turn
from him. She sank down on the rustic bench and waited with throbbing
pulses for an explanation. What would he say--what could he say?

He sat down beside her, pale with emotion, but so splendidly handsome
in his cool summer suit and spotless linen that her heart throbbed
madly, and she thought:

“Oh, my false love! How grandly handsome, how winning you are! It is
no wonder that I lost my heart to you, innocent child that I was! Oh,
would that you had been true and good, as well as fascinating.”

But no one who saw how coldly and proudly her blue eyes looked at him
would have thought that such passionate thoughts thrilled her heart. He
himself believed that she was bitterly angry, and he hastened to say
deprecatingly:

“Mrs. Falconer, you are so startlingly like one I used to know that
when you appeared before me I did not remember you as Mrs. Falconer,
and I called you by that name unwittingly. No offense to you was
intended. I did not know that you were called Pansy.”

“Yes, that is my name. I was Pansy Wilcox when Colonel Falconer
married me. And so you say that I resemble some one you used to know,
Mr. Wylde? How strange!” Pansy said, trying to draw him into some
reminiscences of the past, womanlike, wishing to know whether he
remembered her with love or remorse.

He sighed heavily, and answered:

“Yes, you are the image of one I loved and lost. Do you remember the
night I came to your house, Mrs. Falconer? I came very near calling
you Pansy then--I was so startled at the first sight of your face. But
while you were singing I recovered myself so that I could greet you
calmly. It was different just now, for I was thinking of that other
Pansy, and you came upon me so suddenly that I had no time for thought,
and I called you by her name.”

“It was some one you loved?” Pansy said, in a low, soft voice.

“Loved!” exclaimed Norman Wylde hoarsely, and his dark eyes seemed to
burn into her soul as he added: “Love is hardly the word. I worshiped,
adored my little Pansy.”

“Did she die?” asked Pansy gently.

“Yes, she died,” he replied hoarsely; then, pausing abruptly: “Has not
Juliette Ives told you all about it?” he asked.

“No.”

“It is a wonder,” he muttered.

“You make me quite curious. I think unfortunate love affairs are so sad
and romantic. Was yours unfortunate, Mr. Wylde?” asked Pansy, still
leading him on.

“It was tragic,” he answered gloomily; and she was glad when she saw he
was suffering some remorse for the ill that he had wrought. Her heart
began to grow softer toward him.

“He is sorry for his sin. Perhaps he would undo it if he could,”
whispered her heart.

Norman Wylde lifted his sad, dark eyes and looked at her gravely. Oh,
how strong was the resemblance to his lost love, and how strangely his
heart thrilled at the sound of her voice! No one but Pansy Laurens had
ever made his heart beat faster by a voice of music.

“I wish you would tell me all about it,” she said persuasively.



CHAPTER XXV. AN OLD STORY.


Pansy had quite forgotten why she came to the Capitol Square. She could
think of nothing but Norman Wylde and the sorrow on his handsome face.
She lingered beside him until he consented to tell her the story of his
unhappy love affair.

“I was engaged to Juliette Ives, but I was not very much in love
with her. I met, in the country, a beautiful young girl named Pansy
Laurens,” he said. “The young lady was not in our set. She was poor,
and worked at Arnell & Grey’s tobacco factory; but she was the fairest,
sweetest, most charming little creature I ever met. We fell in love
at first sight, and I broke my engagement with Juliette for her sake.
But, of course, you think, as every one else did, Mrs. Falconer, that I
acted badly.”

He stopped and looked searchingly into her pale face. Oh, how like it
was to his lost love’s, only with a proud smile on it that made it a
little different from Pansy’s, that had been so sweet and gentle.

“I am very much interested; please go on,” she murmured. And, sighing
heavily, Norman Wylde continued:

“Of course, everybody set themselves against us, Pansy’s relations as
well as mine.”

Pansy trembled, for the deep, sweet, thrilling voice went to her heart,
which began to beat heavily and painfully. How her thoughts went back
to the past, when he had been her worshiped lover, and she had thought
him true!

“We met in secret, my sweet little love and I,” continued Norman, “but
we could not see each other very often, because she had to work in the
factory all the week. But on Sundays I saw her at church, and in the
afternoons she would come here, or to Libby Hill Park, always to a
different place, that no one might suspect us. I would have married her
at once, but we should have had nothing to live on, as I had no clients
yet, and my father had threatened to disinherit me if I did not give
her up. But I vowed in secret that I would not do that, and, at last,
fate--as I thought--opened out a way for us to be happy. I found a
client who wished me to go to Europe and manage an important case.”

“And you went?” she asked, for he paused so long that she feared his
confidences were at an end.

“Yes, I went,” he answered slowly; then he looked at her gravely,
and said: “You are a stranger, Mrs. Falconer, and there is something
connected with my trip to London that I should not betray, perhaps, for
the sake of my family.”

“Whatever you tell me will be held sacred,” she said, almost inaudibly,
and the dark eyes looked at her in a sort of wonder.

“I ought not to betray this to any one but a dear friend,” he said
hesitatingly. “Mrs. Falconer, I wonder if you could like me well enough
to be my friend? It would be very pleasant to me. You look so much like
her that I should find comfort in your friendship.”

Many and many a time Pansy Laurens had said to herself that Norman
Wylde was the greatest enemy she had on earth. But now she held out her
hand to him, in its soft silken glove, and he took it and pressed it
eagerly.

“I will be your friend,” she said, wondering if he was going to confess
to her now about the secret marriage that was no marriage, after all.
She was so curious to hear how he would justify that that she did not
hesitate to promise him her friendship.

But, to her wonder and indignation, he skipped quite over that
important era in his love affair, and went on telling her about his
trip to London:

“Mrs. Falconer, that tour on which I prided myself was a plot, a trap,
laid by my parents to get me away from Richmond and from Pansy. My
client was a paid tool of my father’s, and his craft followed me to
London, where, for almost a year, I remained, vainly seeking links in
a case that never had existed, save in the fertile brain of those who
invented that pretext for the purpose of luring me away from home and
love. My brain whirls yet when I recall how I was duped and deceived,
my life and hers made pitiable wrecks for the sake of a despicable
pride of birth and position.”

His agitation was terrible for the moment. His dark eyes blazed, great
drops of perspiration started out on his pallid brow. As for her, she
could not speak; she sat staring at him with parted lips and blue eyes
full of misery.

“Oh, I ought not to have gone back to that time, for it stirs the
smoldering ashes into fire again,” he cried bitterly. “Think, Mrs.
Falconer, how I suffered all that time, never hearing a word from my
darling, although I wrote to her every week, and she had promised to
write to me. And, at last--oh, Heaven!--there came to me a Richmond
paper, saying that she had drowned herself.”

“Oh!” sighed Pansy sympathetically, but he did not seem to hear her.
His head drooped, and his eyes sought the ground. He seemed to be
oblivious to all but his own pain.

For her, she was thinking bitterly:

“I am glad he is capable of some remorse for his sin. It makes me think
a little more kindly of him.”

Then she shuddered at herself, for she knew that she was thinking of
him more than kindly--fast falling under the old glamour--and she knew
this must not be, that she ought to fly as from the tempting of a
serpent. She made a motion to rise, but he looked up quickly.

“Do not go--yet,” he said pleadingly. “Somehow, it is a sad pleasure to
me to see you sitting there, with that face so like poor dead Pansy’s
that it brings back all the perished past.”

At those words she could not rise. She seemed to have no volition
of her own. She sat still, comparing herself to a bird charmed by a
serpent.

“Do you know,” he went on, “we sat here on the very bench one Sunday,
just a week before I sailed for England. She wore a white dress and
wide straw hat, something like you wear now. I told her of my good
fortune, but, poor child, a presentiment seemed to come over her gentle
spirit, and she wept most bitterly because I was going away.”

“He will tell me now of that most shameful marriage,” Pansy thought;
but again she was mistaken.

“Poor little darling! No wonder she felt so gloomy, for our parting
was the knell of her fate,” said Norman Wylde. “I feel quite sure that
by some underhand means our letters to each other were suppressed, for
not a line ever came to me, though I shall never doubt that she wrote
often, and I feel quite certain that it was the agony of suspense and
hope deferred that drove her to suicide.”

“You came home, then, did you not?” she asked.

“No; for I could not have borne to return and find her gone. What was
there to come back to, Mrs. Falconer? Not even a grave, for her body
was never recovered from the river.”

He raised his downcast eyes and looked into her face with such a
searching expression that she trembled lest he was going to tax her
with her identity.

But he did not do so. He only said:

“I was too miserable and distracted to come home then. Besides, I had
not yet discovered the fraud that had been perpetrated on me. I stayed
in London almost a year longer, vainly prosecuting my search for the
missing links in my client’s case, and then, by accident, I found out
how I had been deceived. I came home at once then, and taxed my parents
with the truth. They acknowledged the deception, but claimed that it
had been done for my good, and begged my pardon. I would not forgive
them, yet, for the sake of family pride, I kept secret their perfidy,
and you are the first one to whom it has been revealed.”

“Oh, what a sad, what a miserable ending for so sweet a love story! It
seems a pity you did not marry the girl and take her away with you!”
cried Pansy.

“I wish that I had done so, for then I might have been happy, instead
of the most miserable and remorseful man in the whole world,” groaned
Norman Wylde; and she wondered how much of this was acting and how much
reality.

“Perhaps he loved me better than he knew, and repented when too late
the miserable betrayal that wrecked my life,” she thought, softening
more and more toward him whom she knew she ought to hate.

But before either one could utter another word, the prattling voice of
a little child was heard, and Pansy looked up and saw Mrs. Meade and
little Pet coming along the path toward where she sat.

Pet caught sight of the two sitting there together, and ran forward
with a cry of delight.

“Pretty yady, pretty yady!” he cried joyously, and climbed into Pansy’s
lap and kissed her.



CHAPTER XXVI. THE ENEMY AT WORK.


Norman Wylde seemed almost petrified with amazement at the scene before
him. He gazed in wonder at Pansy and the child, and from them to Mrs.
Meade.

The old housekeeper, on her part, was surprised, too. She scarcely knew
what to make of finding Norman Wylde here with Mrs. Falconer, but she
knew not what to say. She could only stand and stare with a look of
wonder on her fat face, which was flushed crimson from walking in the
hot sun.

Perhaps Pansy understood something of the surprise she was exciting in
Norman Wylde’s mind, for the color rose warmly into her face as she
returned the child’s caress and arose in a hasty way, gently putting
him down upon the seat, and turning toward Mrs. Meade.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Meade. I am glad you have brought your sweet
little boy out for a holiday,” she exclaimed, adding sweetly: “I wish
I could stay for another romp with him, such as I had the other day.
But I have an engagement in a few minutes. Good afternoon, Mr. Wylde. I
have quite enjoyed my little chat with you while I rested under these
beautiful trees.”

He rose and bowed courteously, giving her a glance of grave
friendliness that made her heart beat faster as she walked away,
leaving all her heart behind her with her child and the father of
her child, for--guilty wretch though she believed him--she could not
strangle her yearning love.

“I believe that he is sorry for his sin,” she kept telling herself,
as some palliative of her tenderness for him, when suddenly she heard
quick footsteps behind her and a hand stealthily touched her elbow.

“He has followed me,” she thought, with some alarm, and turned her head
quickly.

Then a low cry of dismay and anger came from her lips.

Mr. Finley, the grocer, her feared and hated stepfather, was walking
along by her side, leering wickedly down into her face with an air of
recognition that almost made her heart stop its beating.

“Good afternoon, Pansy. I am glad to see that you are making it up
with your old lover. I was behind a tree, watching you two while you
sat on that bench talking. You find the old love as sweet as ever, eh?
Well, no one can blame you for not loving that old man you married for
his money,” were the impertinent words that greeted her astonished ears.

She drew herself up haughtily, and tried to freeze him with her
indignant glance.

“Get out of my path, you wretch! How dare you persist in pretending to
recognize me as some one you have known?” she exclaimed angrily; but he
only laughed, and, staying close by her side, retorted:

“Somebody else recognized you as some one he had known before, too,
Mrs. Falconer. Didn’t I hear Norman Wylde calling you Pansy an hour or
so ago, when you first came up to him?”

She trembled with horror at the accusation, but, remembering that she
had not admitted the truth to Norman Wylde, took courage.

“Pshaw! Resemblances are common,” she said carelessly. “I do not
deny that Mr. Wylde took me for some one else, but he immediately
apologized for his mistake, and if you had the instincts of a gentleman
you would do the same.”

“But I have not made a mistake,” leered Finley. He kept along by her
side, although she was walking fast, and continued: “Pansy, you had as
well own up to me, for I have recognized you, and I mean to make money
out of my knowledge. I am poor, and I have your mother and sisters to
support. You are rich, and you must give me some money for them, or I
will betray you to your husband.”

Although Pansy trembled inwardly at his bold threat, she determined
that she would not yield to his demands.

“Once own that I am Pansy Laurens, and all is lost. I could never
satisfy the man’s rapacity, and he would only betray me at last.
Besides, he cannot prove my identity; he only suspects it,” she thought
wisely; and, to his angry astonishment, she laughed scornfully.

“Why are you laughing?” he demanded; and, lifting her bright face
defiantly, she answered:

“I am pleased because I see a policeman up there near the governor’s
mansion, and I am going to give you into custody for annoying me.”

He followed her glance and grew pale as he saw the blue-coated
custodian of the law pacing along the walk she indicated. Stopping
short, he growled fiercely:

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“You will see, my clever friend,” she replied airily, also stopping and
looking up at him again so coolly that he wondered at her unconcern.

“You had better leave me,” she said calmly, though white to the lips
with anger. “I do not desire to have you arrested, for I know my
husband would have you punished to the full extent of the law. He knows
all about my past, and your talk of betrayal is the senseless chatter
of a madman. Will you go now, or shall I call the policeman, or any of
these gentlemen sitting around?”

He was baffled by her cool assumption of fearlessness, for he did not
dare to drive her to bay. No one knew so well as himself what cause he
had to dread exposure.

Glowering fiercely on her from his small, beady black eyes, he hissed,
low and threateningly:

“I am going now, but not that I’m afraid of you, nor that policeman,
either, only for your mother’s sake, because it would break her heart
to know that her shameless child was still alive. But you will hear
from me again--remember that, my saucy madam, and live in fear of my
vengeance.”

“I am not in the least afraid of you, and I am going to call that
policeman this minute,” Pansy answered, walking briskly away; and, to
her joy, Mr. Finley turned and walked quickly off, going out of the
square at a gate directly opposite.

“He is a coward, despite his threats, and he will not trouble me again,
I hope,” she murmured, leaving the square and going quickly toward home
with no other drawback, except meeting several factory girls going home
from work whose faces were perfectly familiar to her, and who had not
forgotten hers, either, for one nudged the other and exclaimed audibly:

“Good gracious, the very image of poor Pansy Laurens!”

Pansy’s heart gave a wild throb, and she hurried past the girls,
thinking:

“I ought never to have come back here. I am not changed as I thought I
was. Every one knows my face, and I fear trouble will come of it yet.
Suppose I were to meet my mother, or sisters, for instance, and they
were to claim me, I do not believe I could be brave enough to deny my
identity.”

That night she begged her husband to hurry up his business, that he
might take her away from the city.

“It is so warm and sultry here that I am almost afraid I shall fall ill
if I stay,” she said; and he, remembering her headache of a few days
before, took alarm at once.

“It is very vexatious, this law business. My sister’s affairs were in
a terribly tangled condition, and I’m afraid it will be several days
yet before I can get away,” he said; then, smiling and encircling
the graceful figure with his arm, he added; “But that is no reason,
my darling, that you and Juliette should remain here. Both of you
are quite ready to go, you say. Then why not start to White Sulphur
to-morrow, and let me follow when I get through my task here?”

Her heart leaped with joy, then she inwardly chided herself for her
eagerness to leave him.

“It would not be kind to leave you--and--I should miss you so,” she
murmured, speaking quite truthfully, for she had a gentle affection
for him still, in spite of the truant heart that fluttered so at the
very thought of Norman Wylde.

“But if I can get away from Richmond I shall not think so often of him,
and I can be truer in heart to my husband,” she thought, for she had
heard the Wyldes say that Norman would not consent to accompany them.

Colonel Falconer was pleased at the knowledge that she would miss him,
but he declared that he was afraid she would be sick if she remained
any longer in the city.

“And as I cannot get away yet, you must not wait for me any longer. You
can write to me every day, and that will be some consolation for your
absence,” he said.

Juliette was delighted when she heard that they were not to wait
for her uncle. She hurried around to the Wyldes the next morning to
persuade them to go, too, and was successful in her mission.

“Only Norman says he can’t get away from his business this summer,”
said Rosalind.

“And he won’t go?” Juliette asked, bitterly disappointed.

“No.”

“Oh, very well. There will be plenty of other beaus!” Juliette said,
tossing her head and pretending to be indifferent. “Well, it is settled
that we meet at the depot this evening, Mrs. Wylde?”

“Yes,” replied the lady; and Juliette hurried home to make her
arrangements, and to vent her spleen on Norman Wylde by saying to Pansy:

“Norman Wylde won’t go because I have treated him so coldly, Rosalind
says; but he may sulk all he chooses. I shall not make up with him in a
hurry.”



CHAPTER XXVII. “A MARRIED FLIRT.”


When Pansy had left Norman Wylde, Mrs. Meade sat down on the seat she
had vacated, and her face was very grave and thoughtful.

It had appeared very strange to her to find Norman Wylde and the
beautiful Mrs. Falconer alone in the park together, and seeming to be
on very amicable terms with each other, whereas she had supposed them
to be almost utter strangers.

“Perhaps she is a flirt,” she thought suspiciously; and just then
Norman Wylde turned his head, after watching Pansy until she
disappeared, and said:

“How does it happen that Mrs. Falconer and Pet are so well acquainted
with each other?”

The old housekeeper, who had known him ever since he was a little boy,
answered dryly:

“Mr. Norman, I was just going to ask the same question about yourself
and Mrs. Falconer.”

He smiled at first, then flushed a dark red at her searching glance,
and answered:

“But I do not know Mrs. Falconer very well. I have never met her but
once or twice until she came down this path, quite by accident, a while
ago, and I invited her to rest a few minutes--she looked so tired and
warm.”

“I was afraid she was one of them married flirts that’s getting so
fashionable nowadays,” muttered Mrs. Meade.

“A married flirt! No, indeed! I believe Mrs. Falconer is as pure and
sweet and shy as a child. She is so much like one I knew years ago that
she could not be otherwise,” exclaimed Norman Wylde earnestly, as he
fondled Pet, who had crept to his knee, thus consoling himself for the
departure of his “pretty yady.”

Mrs. Meade looked up, all eager interest.

“Like some one you knew?” she exclaimed eagerly.

“Yes,” he replied, with a heavy sigh, and the housekeeper asked
coaxingly:

“Would you mind telling me whom she looked like, Mr. Norman?”

“Curiosity, thy name is woman!” he said, with a low laugh, half dreary
amusement, half bitterness; then, with another sigh, he went on: “Mrs.
Meade, I suppose you know all about my unfortunate love affair of three
years ago?”

She nodded, and then he said:

“This beautiful Mrs. Falconer is the image of the girl I loved, and
from whom my parents parted me. She committed suicide by drowning
within a year after I went away, you remember?”

“Ah!” exclaimed the old housekeeper, and her face began to glow with
excitement.

“Mr. Norman, are you sure she drowned herself?” she asked eagerly.

“Sure!” he repeated, turning toward her, with wondering eyes. “Why,
what do you mean, Mrs. Meade?”

“Was her body ever recovered from the river?” retorted the housekeeper
significantly.

He started violently, then answered:

“No!”

“So I thought,” said Mrs. Meade, and, following up her train of
thought, she added: “There isn’t any possibility that Mrs. Falconer can
be the same girl, is there, Mr. Norman?”

He sprang from his seat, pushing Pet unconsciously from him, and
confronted her, pale with surprise and excitement.

“You must be mad!” he exclaimed. “This lady was one of the belles of
Louisville--never was in Richmond until this summer, I am told.”

“Sit down, Mr. Norman, and forgive me for talking like an old fool,
although maybe I’m not such a fool, after all,” answered Mrs. Meade.
But he would not sit down again; he remained standing in front of her
and looking down consciously into her agitated face as she continued,
in a low, grave voice:

“Being such an old woman, Mr. Norman, and knowing you ever since you
was no bigger than Pet here, you needn’t mind my asking you questions
that might be impertinent from some people.”

“Ask what you please, Mrs. Meade. I am too much your friend to take
offense at your plain speaking,” he replied encouragingly; and, without
any further preamble, she queried:

“In that unfortunate love affair of yours, Mr. Norman, was there any
prospect of--a--child?”

“No!” he answered quickly, almost angrily, yet she saw the hot color
shoot up to his brow, and his glance fell before hers.

She sighed, and exclaimed:

“Then I’m all at sea again, for, to tell you the truth, Mr. Norman,
I’ve been half believing all this time that Pet here was your own
child!”

He started as if shot, and, dropping into a seat again, caught Pet’s
hand and drew him forward, scrutinizing his beautiful features with
eager eyes:

“Can’t you see that he has your eyes, your features?” exclaimed Mrs.
Meade triumphantly, and, with something like a groan, he muttered:

“And something of her, too!” he said. “That smile, those dainty
dimples, how like, how like! Now I understand what drew my heart so
strongly to the child. Mrs. Meade,” looking up at her with blazing
eyes, “you must answer now the question I asked you first: How is it
that Pet and Mrs. Falconer know each other so well?”

And, for answer, she began at the first meeting of Mrs. Falconer
and the child, and related all that had taken place since, dwelling
strongly on their mutual passionate attachment for each other, and on
the lady’s eager desire to adopt the child.

“I will tell you the truth, Mr. Norman: I strongly suspect that this
beautiful lady is the child’s own mother, and if there is no chance
that the little one can be yours, why, then I ought to let her have
him, maybe. I refused because I thought he was yours,” she said.

“You were right not to let her have him,” he exclaimed hurriedly.
Then his face dropped into his hands a moment, and passers-by looked
curiously at the old woman, the pretty child, and the handsome man
bowed in an attitude of deep dejection.

Little Pet was so grieved at the man’s sorrowful attitude that he
went up to him and encircled Norman’s neck with his chubby arms, and
inquired tenderly:

“Oo kyin’ tause pretty yady gone?”

The young man caught him in his arms, straining him to his breast, and
again gazed eagerly into his lovely face.

“My little darling, what if it were to prove true?” he muttered
hoarsely; then, looking around at Mrs. Meade, he asked:

“Do you know where Mrs. Laurens, the mother of poor little Pansy,
lives?”

“No, I do not know,” she replied; and a look of bitter disappointment
came over his face.

“I have been trying ever since I came home to trace that woman,” he
exclaimed. “I remember that just before I went away she was married a
second time, and went on a bridal tour with her husband. But I do not
know the name of the person she married, nor where she is living now,
for she has moved away from where she resided when I went away.”

Was it fate, or only a blind chance, for at that moment there came
along the walk a plainly dressed, stooping figure, with a sad, worn
face that had once been very pretty, though now faded and forlorn.
Norman had seen Pansy’s mother only once, but he recognized her again
in this passer-by, and, springing to his feet, exclaimed:

“Mrs. Laurens!”

The pale, sad-looking creature recoiled from him with a frightened
denial:

“I--I--that is not my name!”

Norman caught her wrist in a firm yet tender clasp, for she was trying
to get away.

“Wait!” he said sternly. “Denials are useless, for I know that you are
Mrs. Laurens, and I think you know that I am Norman Wylde. I was just
speaking about you and wishing I knew where to find you. I want you
to tell me the truth about this child here. Is it not your daughter
Pansy’s?”

“No--oh, no!” she exclaimed wildly; but just then Mrs. Meade exclaimed
surprisedly:

“La, me, that’s the very woman I have seen dozens of times, hanging
about when I took Pet out, but never mistrusted who she was!”

Mrs. Laurens looked at her imploringly, and faltered out:

“You must be mistaken. I never saw you before, ma’am.”

“Well, I never!” ejaculated the housekeeper, and little Pet himself
gave the lie to Mrs. Laurens’ denial, for he came to her with a smile,
and cooed sweetly:

“Is oo dot any more tandy to-day?”

“You see, the child knows you. Confess the truth now! Are you not his
own grandmother?” exclaimed Norman, low but eagerly.

Mrs. Laurens writhed under his grasp, and looked from right to left
with frightened eyes.

“Answer me!” persisted Norman. But a dogged look came over her face,
and she replied:

“No, my daughter Pansy never had a child. Why do you want to throw
disgrace on my poor dead girl?” And she suddenly burst into tears,
and, tugging at his hand, wailed out: “Oh, let me go! I promised to
meet my daughter Alice when she was coming home from the factory,
and--and--it’s past the closing time now.”

“Will you swear that this is not Pansy’s child?” Norman insisted
hoarsely; but at that moment she succeeded in freeing her hand from his
clasp and darted away like a startled deer. Not wishing to create a
sensation, he had to refrain from following her.



CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BLACKMAILER BAFFLED.


Mr. Finley had left Pansy and sought his home again in a tempest
of fury and baffled cupidity, realizing fully that his scheme of
blackmailing her would not succeed, and that he must look elsewhere for
booty.

Pansy’s dauntless bravery and defiance had certainly staggered his bold
courage, and he began to fear that he was not going to receive such a
windfall as he had expected from Pansy’s secret. Having a dangerous
secret of his own, which would be sure to come to light if he proceeded
openly against her, he found himself in a quandary.

“The plucky little wretch! Who would have believed that she would
openly defy me, and deny her identity? Why, she would have handed me
over to that policeman in another moment if I hadn’t cut and run,”
he exclaimed angrily, feeling that he would like to shake the little
beauty for her bold defiance.

He slept but little that night for thinking about her, and the next day
he came to the conclusion that, of all those concerned in the drama
in which he was so cleverly enacting the villain’s part, there was no
chance of blackmailing any but Colonel Falconer.

“He is rich and will pay liberally for the keeping of the secret I
hold against his wife,” he decided, and then he set his cunning brain
to work to devise a plan by which to approach Colonel Falconer on the
delicate subject of his wife.

Poor little Mrs. Finley, whom he had long ago reduced to the status
of a trembling, obedient slave, looked at him in wonder as he lounged
about the house, paying no attention to the grocery, for he had long
ago placed Willie in his store as a clerk, and the youth was very
reliable. She thought fearfully:

“There is something brewing in his cunning mind. Has he found out that
I have been seeing my poor little grandchild by stealth, and is he
planning some punishment for me?”

She trembled at the thought, for she knew that he was both cunning and
vindictive. He ruled her and her children with a rod of iron.

He had never forgotten or forgiven the assertion of his wife, that she
would never have married him if she had known that he would not care
for her children, and he made her and them suffer for it in various
ways. One of his favorite methods was to taunt them with the disgrace
that Pansy had brought upon them, and another was to keep alive in
Willie’s breast the fierce resentment and murderous wrath that had
taken hold of him when he first learned that his beautiful sister had
gone astray.

Left to himself and to the remorseful pleadings of his mother, the
young man might have got over some of his anger, more especially as
poor Pansy had atoned for her fault with her life. There were times
when the remembrance of her message to him, her pitiful promise that
she would never disgrace him again, stung keenly, and forced him to
accuse himself of being accessory to her death; but these moods never
lasted long, for whenever Mr. Finley found these kinder impulses taking
root in the youth’s mind he would dispel them by maliciously hinting
that, in all probability, Pansy was yet alive, and might turn up at any
time to recall to the world the scandal that had trailed its slime
over the name of Laurens.

“Pretty Kate North would not smile so sweetly then when she saw you
waiting at the church door on Sundays,” he suggested, with a leer that
brought the hot color to Willie’s cheeks, for this, his first real love
affair, was a very tender point with him, and he had often wondered to
himself if pretty little Kate North, with her black eyes and dimpled
red cheeks, thought any the less of him because of the family disgrace.

His love for Kate made him all the more bitter in his thoughts toward
Pansy.

“How dared she disgrace the family so? I hate her memory, even though
believing her dead and if I knew she were alive I should be tempted to
carry out my threat, and shoot her on sight,” he replied angrily to
the taunt of his stepfather that day on which Mr. Finley’s mind was
so engaged in plotting the best means by which to extort money from
Colonel Falconer for keeping the dark secret of his wife’s past.

He did not know that his malice had overreached itself, and that the
fury smoldering in Willie’s impetuous mind, and fanned into flame by
his sneers and gibes, would bear fruit to disappoint him of all his
avaricious hopes.

Willie was almost twenty now, with an overstrained sense of honor,
sharpened in intensity by his sister’s fault. He was sensitively alive
to the disgrace that rested on the family name, and had brooded over it
until he had grown morbid. His handsome young face remained dark and
cloudy after Mr. Finley went out, and his thoughts were so absorbed
that he could scarcely wait upon the customers who came in and out of
the neat store.

“Strange that he is always suggesting the thought that Pansy may be
alive, after all. Perhaps he knows more than he chooses to tell,” he
muttered. And the thought wore on him so that he went to the corner of
a shelf, where his stepfather kept a private bottle, and took a drink
of brandy to steady his shaking nerves.

Then, from a case in a hiding place of his own he took a small pistol
and examined it with gloomy eyes.

“It is all right,” he muttered hoarsely; then, at the sound of a step
entering the store, he replaced it hurriedly, and turned around, to
face Mr. North, the father of the girl he loved.

“Good afternoon, Mr. North. What can I do for you?” he inquired
politely.

Mr. North was only a clerk, but he was inordinately proud and
ambitious, and his face darkened with anger as he returned brusquely:

“I want a few words with you, young man. My wife tells me that you have
been paying some attention to my daughter Kate?”

“Ye-es, Mr. North,” Willie stammered, with a boyish flush, adding
anxiously: “I trust you have no objection to my love for her?”

“Nonsense! You are nothing but a boy,” replied Mr. North curtly, and
the handsome young face before him deepened in color at the taunt; but
he answered, in a manly way:

“I am almost twenty, and my stepfather has promised to give me a
partnership in the store when I am twenty-one. My prospects are fair.”

“I care nothing for your prospects! It is your family I object to,” was
the brusque, startling reply. Then, as if ashamed of the taunt, Mr.
North went on, more gently: “I am sorry to wound your feelings, Willie;
I believe you are a good boy, in the main, although it was said at one
time that you were dissipated and wild. Still, you had an excuse for
that--the same excuse that I have in forbidding your attentions to my
daughter.”

“Mr. North!”

“I said that I forbade any more attentions to Kate. When she marries,
it must be one with a stainless family record. Your sister’s fault has
disgraced her family, and may do so even more terribly, for there are
many who doubt that she was ever drowned, and she may reappear at any
time.”

“Mr. North, are there any grounds for this belief?” the poor fellow
asked hoarsely.

“A face like hers has been seen several times in Richmond lately. Some
of the factory girls believe that they saw her yesterday as they came
from work. She is always richly dressed, and it must be that she is
leading a life of gilded shame in this city.”

A hoarse groan came from the stricken young man’s lips; then, with
flashing eyes, he exclaimed:

“Then she is running a terrible risk, for only let me find her, and I
will send a bullet crashing through her shameless heart!”

“No, no!” the gentleman exclaimed, recoiling in dismay, but Willie
Laurens angrily reiterated his threat.

“You will see,” he said. “She wrecked my life, and I will wipe out the
family disgrace in her heart’s blood.”

“You are mad, simply mad! Would you become your sister’s murderer, and
break your poor mother’s heart?” cried Mr. North, shocked and pained
by his furious mood, and not dreaming of the fiery fluid that had
inflamed the young man’s blood. He turned away from the reckless boy,
and was going abruptly out of the store when a horseman drew rein on
the pavement before him, and asked excitedly:

“Does the mother of Miss Alice Laurens live here?”

“Yes; is there anything wrong?” inquired Mr. North curiously, and at
the same moment the pale, agitated face of Willie Laurens appeared in
the doorway, and he said:

“I am the brother of Alice Laurens. What is wrong?”

The man looked at him with pitying eyes, and answered:

“Heaven knows I hate to tell you, but I have no choice. An accident has
befallen your sister. She fell through an open hatchway at Arnell &
Grey’s a few minutes ago, and--break it to her mother as gently as you
can, for they are bringing her here now. She is very badly hurt. It is
not believed that she can live.”

“Terrible!” cried Mr. North, as he flung out his arms to support Willie
Laurens, who had reeled and staggered in agony at that heart-rending
announcement.



CHAPTER XXIX. CAUGHT IN A TRAP.


Pretty sixteen-year-old Alice Laurens looked wonderfully like her elder
sister as she lay, with pale face and close-shut lids, upon her little
bed, with her mother and only remaining sister, Nora, weeping over
her, while Mr. Finley hovered, like a bird of prey, in the background,
heartlessly calculating in his own mind how far this accident might be
turned to his advantage in forcing Pansy Falconer to own her identity,
and to pay his price for keeping her secret from her proud husband.

Alice Laurens had a broken arm, and had remained unconscious ever
since her fall, so that the physicians feared she had sustained
internal injuries that would speedily result in death. One of them had
accompanied her home, and sat in grave silence, watching the scene,
while Willie Laurens, utterly crushed and disheartened, had flung
himself into a chair, and, with his convulsed face hidden in his hands,
seemed utterly oblivious to everything but his sorrow.

Altogether, it was a sad scene on which the parting sun’s rays fell,
as they slanted in at the open door and penciled with golden beams the
prematurely silvered head of the unhappy mother as she knelt by her
unconscious child, uttering piteous moans of grief and despair, for her
afflictions pressed heavily on her heart.

Minutes passed, and there was apparently no change in Alice. That
she still lived was only evident from a faint pulsation which the
clever physician could barely detect in her wrist, and every moment he
expected that even that faint, fluttering spark would go out in death.

The lingering sunset began to fade. Some of the neighbors came in with
hushed footsteps and sympathetic faces. On the dark, frowning face of
Mr. Finley a light of satisfaction began to dawn.

When twilight began to darken the summer sky, he slipped from that
solemn chamber, where they were watching for death to come in and
dispossess the mother’s heart of its treasure, and disappeared from the
scene.

He made his way quickly to Franklin Street, and rang the bell at
Colonel Falconer’s door. When a servant appeared he pushed past him
and unceremoniously entered the wide hall.

“Tell Mrs. Falconer that a man is waiting with an important message
from her husband,” he said boldly.

The servant showed him into a small reception room, and disappeared,
while Finley waited--rather nervously, it must be confessed, for he was
by no means certain that Colonel Falconer was out. What if he should
appear, and kick the lying intruder out of doors?

But fortune favored him, for in a very few moments the rustle of a
woman’s garments was audible, and then Pansy appeared before him,
simply clad in a pale-gray traveling dress, and with a tear-stained
face and swollen eyes. She closed the door carefully behind her, then
started back as she beheld her visitor.

“You!” she exclaimed, in horrified tones.

He rose and bowed profoundly.

“I came to bring you the sad news of poor Alice, but I see from your
face that you have already heard,” he said pointedly.

Pansy made a scornful gesture, and sank into a seat.

“What do you mean?” she demanded, trying to keep up an assumption of
indifference that was only too plainly belied by her trembling voice
and swollen eyelids.

“Your sister Alice, Mrs. Falconer, fell, by accident, through an open
hatchway at Arnell & Grey’s this afternoon, and is now on her deathbed.
She raves for you--calls for you every moment. Can you have the heart
to refuse to go to your dying sister?”

She looked steadily at him, and answered defiantly:

“I have heard of that accident at Arnell & Grey’s, but what is that to
me? I do not know the poor girl.”

“What is the use your trying to fence with me like this, Pansy? I know
you!” cried Finley harshly, adding: “But I did not know your cursed
pride was so strong, else I had not come for you, even to please that
poor, dying girl, who begged me so piteously to come.”

“She did not send you. She believes that her erring sister died,” Pansy
answered irresolutely.

“She believed that once, but not lately. There have been rumors that
she is still alive, that she had been seen of late on the streets of
this city, and that she is living a life of gilded shame. The story has
preyed on the poor girl’s mind, and she sent me to seek you, that she
might pray you with her dying breath to forsake your sinful life.”

“You have told those base falsehoods to that poor, credulous child!”
Pansy flashed forth indignantly, but he denied the accusation, and
continued:

“I cannot bear to return to her without you. The disappointment in her
dying eyes would haunt me. I will make you a proposition, Pansy: Come
with me to her dying bed, and I will manage things so that you shall
see her alone. Not even her mother shall enter the room, and you shall
go away again, and not a living soul be any the wiser for your presence
there.”

She saw that he was very much in earnest, that he would do as he said,
and, twisting her little hands together in an agony of indecision, she
exclaimed:

“Do you know that in little more than an hour I am to leave here for
the White Sulphur Springs? Miss Ives has already gone around to her
friends who will accompany us. My husband will come home presently to
drive with me to the depot.”

“And in the meantime your poor, dying sister is calling for you in
vain. Pansy Laurens, you are utterly heartless!” exclaimed Mr. Finley,
with a fine show of indignation.

She trembled perceptibly, and grew pale as a snowdrop under the glare
of the gaslight.

“May her uneasy spirit haunt you, and drive repose from your breast!”
he cried tragically.

Whirling toward him with a disdainful gesture of her white hand, she
exclaimed:

“What if I went with you, simply to humor the fancy of this poor, dying
girl--mind, I own to no relationship with her--what would be the price
of your silence?”

Without moving a muscle, he answered coolly:

“A thousand dollars!”

“You are certainly rapacious! I could not give you such a sum to-night.”

“I should not expect it. I would give you a week to raise it, if you
would leave with me some of your diamonds as a guarantee of good
faith,” he replied, with an air of business that amused while it
disgusted her.

“Unfortunately, my jewels are packed and my trunks are gone. You will
have to depend upon my simple word of honor, or go back as you came,”
she replied coldly.

He studied her face a moment, then said sullenly:

“I will take your word of honor, then. You have too much at stake to
risk disappointing me. So that is settled. Of course, if you did not
pay me in a week I should follow you to the White Sulphur Springs. Will
you come with me now?”

“Go out and hail some passing cab, and keep it waiting at the corner
around the next square. I will join you there in a few minutes, for I
have no time to lose. I must return here in time to join my husband,”
Pansy answered, dismissing him with a wave of her hand, and then
hastening upstairs to don a concealing bonnet and veil, and to leave
some plausible excuse with Phebe for Colonel Falconer, who might return
at any moment.

She left the house regretfully, with unsteady steps and a foreboding
heart, fearing that she was doing wrong, but drawn by a passionate
yearning to the deathbed of her beloved sister.

“How could I refuse her dying prayer, even though its granting be
attended with so much risk and cost to myself?” she thought, with
generous pity and self-sacrificing love.

“Remember,” she said to Finley, as they were whirled swiftly up the
steep grade of Broad Street toward his home on Church Hill, “I must see
Alice Laurens alone. You will go in first, and see that every one else
leaves the room.”

“I will do so,” he promised, and no more was said between them. At
the corner below his residence the hack was stopped. He got out, and
directed her to wait until he returned for her.

When he reëntered the house he found that a great change had taken
place in the invalid.

She had recovered full consciousness, and appeared so much better than
had been expected by her physician that he declared it quite likely she
would recover, if no untoward circumstances intervened. Fortunately for
Finley’s purpose, the physician was watching by her bed alone, having
persuaded the family to go into the dining room and partake of tea. A
clever thought came to Finley, and he exclaimed:

“Doctor Hewitt, a man has fallen in a fit on the corner two squares
below, and they are hunting a physician everywhere. I will watch beside
Alice if you will go.”

The physician seized his hat, and, promising to return after a while,
darted out, leaving the grocer in possession.

He stooped over Alice, who was regarding him with wide-open, loathing
eyes, for he was universally hated by his stepchildren, and, bending
down, whispered hurriedly:

“Your sister Pansy is coming to see you. Mind, there must be no outcry,
and you must never tell any one she came, for she can stay but a few
minutes, and no one must ever know she has been here.”

In a few minutes more the two long-parted sisters were weeping in each
other’s arms.

“Do not try to talk, my darling sister,” whispered Pansy fondly,
while Finley adroitly lowered the gas and turned the key in the door.
Tenderly caressing Alice, Pansy continued: “I was not drowned, Alice,
but I made you all think so that you might not worry over my fate. I am
the wife of a good man, but he does not know my sad story, and I can
never own my relatives, for then he would find out everything, and he
is so proud he would cast me off. But I could not stay away, dear, when
they told me you were dying, so I came in secret.”

“I am glad that you came, my precious sister; but there is some mistake
about my dying, for the doctor says I have a fair chance of getting
well,” Alice answered feebly.

“Thank Heaven!” murmured her beautiful sister, and the silence of deep
emotion fell over them as they clung to each other.

Finley looked on with exultation. These moments of reunion between the
long-parted sisters were worth a thousand dollars to him now, and much
more in the future; for, having once established a claim on Pansy, he
would never rest satisfied until he had wrung from her every dollar she
could command for years to come.

“Oh, Alice, I long to see our mother, but I dare not do so. She must
never know that I am living. You must keep the secret of this meeting,
and, oh, you must love her well, and be very good to her for my sake,
as well as your own,” murmured Pansy, with tears in her beautiful eyes,
as she drew herself reluctantly from Alice’s clasping arms.

“Must you go so soon?” sighed the suffering girl.

“I dare not stay longer,” sobbed Pansy. She bent down and whispered
hurriedly: “Alice, I will send you some money anonymously, and you must
let no one know it came from me. Spend it for yourself, mamma, and
Nora. Good-by, darling!” And, pressing her lips to her sister’s cheek
in despairing love, she rose upright, and said anxiously:

“Mr. Finley, I must go now, or they will come in and find me here.”

She had pushed her thick veil back to the top of her bonnet, and her
beautiful, pale face was clearly defined, even in the dim light of
the room. Mr. Finley had forgotten that in this room, which was upon
the first floor, there was a window that opened upon a narrow alley.
The shutters were drawn, but the sash was raised, and Willie Laurens,
anxious to see how Alice was, but fearful of intruding on the strict
quiet prescribed for her, had tiptoed through the alley and slanted the
shutters that he might gaze into the room.

He saw with amazement the beautiful form kneeling by Alice and clasping
her in its tender arms, saw the fond parting kiss, heard the words
addressed to Mr. Finley, and beheld with mad, murderous rage the
beautiful, despairing face of the sister whose sin had disgraced him
and put the girl he loved so far above his reach.

The seed Mr. Finley had industriously planted in his pliant mind had
grown by now into a tree that was ready to bear deadly fruit. With a
smothered imprecation, he rushed back into the store, and presently,
when Pansy came stealing through the darkened hallway on her way to the
street, her brother was waiting for her with the fires of hell in his
young heart.

He lifted the pistol in his hand, fired, and Pansy fell, bathed in
blood, just inside the doorway.



CHAPTER XXX. A SUPPOSED SUICIDE.


In the very moment that Willie Laurens beheld his doomed sister fall
by his hand, a torrent of remorse and despair overwhelmed the anger
that had hurried him on to the awful deed, and, hurling the pistol from
his grasp, he rushed to her side, and fell down on his knees, uttering
bitter cries of remorse and self-reproach.

Mr. Finley, coming instantly upon the scene, dragged him furiously to
his feet.

“You devil, you have killed your sister! Now fly, fly, and save
yourself from the law!”

But even while he spoke, the dining-room door was thrown violently
open, and Mrs. Finley, followed by Nora, rushed upon the scene.

By the light thrown from the open doorway of the room they had left,
Pansy’s recumbent figure, with the blood flowing from it, was plainly
seen on the floor.

“Oh, Heaven, what is this?” cried the distracted woman, and Willie
wrenched himself loose from his stepfather’s hold, and answered
despairingly:

“Mother, it is Pansy. She came back, as this wretch here was always
hinting she would, and my fiendish temper got the better of me----”

“And you killed her, you devil!” interrupted Mrs. Finley. She lifted
her arm, shrieking hoarsely: “Go, go--with a mother’s curse on your
wicked head! You are no longer a child of mine.”

But Mr. Finley exclaimed sharply:

“Hush your clatter, you parcel of fools! Perhaps she is not dead, after
all. Doctor Hewitt will be back in a moment. Willie, go to your room,
and stay there until I come to you!”

Trained to habits of the strictest obedience to his harsh stepfather,
Willie mechanically obeyed, and then Mr. Finley turned to his wife and
said sharply:

“I shall tell Hewitt that this is a case of suicide, and don’t either
of you dare contradict me!”

At that moment Doctor Hewitt appeared upon the doorstep, returning from
his fool’s errand, and Mr. Finley hurriedly drew him in, and shut the
door, turning the key in the lock. Strangely enough, no one had been
attracted to the scene by the sound of the pistol shot, and he felt
safe to carry out the deception.

“Doctor, here is a new case for you!” he exclaimed, and, turning up the
gas, the dreadful scene was revealed in all its horror and pathos.

Doctor Hewitt had been physician to Arnell & Grey for many years, and,
in the beautiful girl lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the
floor, he instantly recognized the little factory girl who had come to
harm years ago and then disappeared so mysteriously as to leave abroad
the impression that she had drowned herself.

“Pansy Laurens!” he exclaimed, in a shocked tone, and Mr. Finley
replied:

“Yes, it is poor Pansy. Is it not dreadful to think that, after staying
away all these years, she should return to commit suicide in her
mother’s house?”

“Suicide?” echoed Doctor Hewitt.

“Yes; we all heard a shot, and, rushing into the hall, found Pansy
lying like this, and this pistol on the floor, where it had dropped
from her hand,” exhibiting the pistol Willie had thrown down.

Doctor Hewitt was on his knees by Pansy’s side, examining her wound,
and in a few minutes he looked up, and said, in a tone of relief:

“She has not succeeded in her awful design. The bullet only went
through her shoulder, and she is not likely to die from that.”

“Thank Heaven!” cried Mrs. Finley gladly, and her wicked husband could
not help slightly echoing her words, for he was beginning to feel like
a murderer, remembering how he kept at white heat, by his taunts and
sneers, the fire of murderous rage in Willie Laurens’ heart.

“She must be put to bed at once, and her wound dressed,” said the
physician; and they carried her upstairs to her own room, where she had
spent such unhappy hours four years ago. Then Mr. Finley said:

“Doctor Hewitt, I would be glad to keep this whole miserable affair,
even Pansy’s presence in this house, a secret, for the sake of her
innocent young sisters. Will you help me to do it?”

“Yes,” Doctor Hewitt replied, and then he sent Mr. Finley down to see
after the patient who had been forgotten for the moment in the horror
of this new calamity.

When Pansy’s wound had been dressed she revived, and found her mother
and sister by her side. They greeted each other with solemn, tender
sadness, and then Pansy recognized the physician, and asked him quietly
if she were going to die.

“I hope not. Your wound is a painful one, but not necessarily
dangerous. With good nursing, you will recover,” he replied pleasantly,
and then he went down to see about Alice.

Pansy lay for a long time in silence, then asked that Willie might come
to her. When he came into the room, it seemed as if years had gone over
his head, he was so changed by his grief and remorse.

If she knew that his hand had fired that fatal shot, she made no sign
of her knowledge. Greeting him with tender sisterly love, she drew him
down to her, and whispered softly:

“Go to Franklin Street, and tell Colonel Falconer to come with you to
see his wife. Yes, I am his wife, Willie,” as he started wildly. “Do
not tell him I was wounded. It would startle him too much. Only ask him
to come to me.”

She realized that further concealment of her past, after all that had
happened would be useless. She must confess all, and throw herself on
Colonel Falconer’s mercy.



CHAPTER XXXI. AN AMAZED HUSBAND.


Willie Laurens found Colonel Falconer pacing up and down the walk in
front of his house, watching impatiently for his wife’s return from the
errand of kindness on which she had vaguely told the maid she was going.

It was no wonder he was impatient, for it lacked scarcely ten minutes
to train time. The carriage was waiting for Pansy, and Phebe, the maid,
was already seated within it.

“You are Colonel Falconer, sir?” Willie Laurens asked politely.

“Yes. Have you any business with me?”

“A message from your wife. She wishes that I should conduct you to her
side.”

“Has anything happened to my wife?” exclaimed Colonel Falconer
excitedly.

“You will soon know if you will accompany me,” returned Willie
evasively.

“Where is she?”

“At my mother’s house on Church Hill.”

Colonel Falconer gave a keen, scrutinizing glance into the young man’s
face by the light afforded from a gas lamp near by.

Then he started violently.

In the boyish beauty of Willie’s face he detected a strong likeness to
his wife.

“Your name?” he exclaimed.

“Willie Laurens.”

“Are you related to my wife?”

“That is for her to say, Colonel Falconer,” replied the young man
modestly.

“But I don’t understand this at all. My wife should be here to
accompany me at once. She will miss her train,” exclaimed Colonel
Falconer testily.

“I think she expected that, sir,” was the answer he received from
Willie, who began to grow nervous as he scrutinized the big,
good-looking colonel, wondering what he would say if he knew that the
slight youth before him had attempted his wife’s life.

“He would strike me down at his feet in a moment,” he decided
nervously, and, in order to ward off all further questions, he said:

“I think, sir, that if you would come at once with me to Mrs. Falconer
she would explain everything to your satisfaction.”

“Very well, then, I will do so, for I am very much puzzled over all
this. Will you come with me in my carriage, Mr. Laurens?”

“I shall be glad of a seat with you, sir, as it will enable us to reach
Mrs. Falconer sooner.”

“Come, then!” And they entered the carriage, where they found Phebe in
a fever of curiosity.

“Would it be advisable to take my wife’s maid?” the colonel then asked;
and Willie, remembering that Pansy would need a nurse, and that his
mother would have her hands full in caring for Alice, replied in the
affirmative.

He then gave the address to the driver, and in a very short time they
arrived at their destination.

“Perhaps you had better leave the maid in the carriage,” suggested
Willie, and Colonel Falconer readily acquiesced, thinking that Pansy
would be ready to accompany him home in a few minutes.

During the drive to Mr. Finley’s house he had come to the conclusion
that Pansy’s warm sympathies had been enlisted by some charitable
object for which she wished to secure his pity and aid. For this
laudable purpose she had doubtless delayed starting on her trip,
thinking that to-morrow would do as well.

“But Juliette and the Wyldes will have already gone,” he thought. “No
matter; Mrs. Wylde can chaperon Juliette until Pansy goes.”

But his complacent feelings were soon dissipated, for, as they went
upstairs, Willie Laurens said reluctantly:

“Colonel Falconer, your wife was seized with a sudden sickness an hour
ago, and you must not be surprised or frightened if you find her still
in bed.”

Then he threw open Pansy’s door.



CHAPTER XXXII. THE REVELATION.


Colonel Falconer was so shocked and startled by Willie Laurens’ words
that he staggered rather than walked across the threshold of the room
where Pansy was lying, with close-shut eyes, among the white pillows of
the bed, carefully watched by Nora Laurens, who now, at a sign from her
brother, arose and left the room.

Colonel Falconer found himself alone with Pansy, and, at the closing
of the door, she opened wide those wondrous eyes of violet blue, and
looked mournfully up into his face.

Oh, the pain, the grief, the despair of that glance! It went straight
to the man’s loving heart, and he fell on his knees with a groan, and
pressed his lips to her white brow in passionate love.

She lay still and sorrowful, while fond words of love poured from
his lips, and kisses rained on her fair face. She said to herself
that if he repudiated her and cast her off after he had heard her sad
confession, she would have the memory of these caresses to comfort her
when her noble husband was lost to her forever.

By and by he lifted his head, and said reproachfully:

“You should not have gone out, my darling, if you were not feeling
well. You know you have not been strong for some time.”

She knew that she must speak now, and so she answered faintly:

“I have had an accident, Colonel Falconer. I have been shot in the
shoulder.”

He recoiled with a cry of dismay, and she continued, in a low but
distinct voice:

“Stay here by me, and--I--will--tell you all--about it. I am not going
to die, they say, although it--might--be--better if I were.”

“Pansy, you must be raving! You do not mean that,” he exclaimed, in
alarm, and with such a tender look that she exclaimed remorsefully:

“Ah, how good you are to me! But I do not deserve it, for I have
deceived you shamefully, and when I have confessed my sin you
will--cast me off--you will never--speak--to--poor--Pansy again!”

“Now I am quite sure that you are raving. You have done nothing, my
precious wife, for which I could visit you with such harsh punishment
as that,” exclaimed her husband fondly, as he bent over her and
smoothed back with loving hands the curling locks that strayed over her
blue-veined brow.

A heavy sigh drifted over the lips that were pale with pain, and Pansy
murmured sadly:

“I am not raving. Although I am in great pain from the wound in my
shoulder, I know quite well what I am saying. I have deceived you, my
kind, noble husband, and when you know all you will hate me.”

“Nonsense!” he replied cheerily, and, clasping her cold little hand
warmly and closely in his, he murmured reassuringly:

“Come, let us have that dreadful confession, my pet, that your foolish
alarms may be speedily dissipated.”

But no answering smile met his. Pansy was as pale as death as she began:

“Louisville was not my--native place--as I told you. I--I--was born--in
Richmond--and I am at this moment--under my mother’s roof.”

Colonel Falconer started violently, but he still kept fast hold of her
little hand as she continued:

“That is not all. I--I--had run away from my home when I met
Mrs. Beach. There--there--was a stain--upon my name--although,”
passionately, “I swear to you it was not my fault! I am--Heaven pity
me!--that girl whom Juliette Ives hates so relentlessly because she
caused the breaking of her engagement with Norman Wylde.”

“Pansy Laurens!” Colonel Falconer uttered, in a voice of horror; and he
dropped her hand and started back.

She made no reply. Her confession had exhausted her strength, and she
had fainted.



CHAPTER XXXIII. NOBLE FORGIVENESS.


Colonel Falconer stood gazing like one petrified at his unconscious
wife until suddenly his own face whitened to a marble pallor, an
expression of keen agony convulsed his features, and, clasping both
hands upon his breast, he sank backward into a chair, while a low moan
of pain escaped his lips.

He had been seized with a spasm at the heart, a misfortune that had
befallen him at various times in his life, but of which he had never
spoken to Pansy, being very sensitive on the score of the heart
disease, which was hereditary in the Falconer family, and of which his
sister, Mrs. Ives, had died.

For a few moments he lay back in the chair, struggling with all his
strength of mind against his misery; then, putting his hand into his
breast pocket, he brought out a small vial, from whose contents he
swallowed a few drops. The effect soon became apparent in a cessation
of the terrible pain. Then a low, frightened cry from the bed made him
look toward Pansy, and he found that she had revived and was staring at
him with a glance of wonder and fear.

“Oh, what is it? Have I killed you?” she gasped faintly.

“It is nothing--a slight spasm of the heart, brought on by excitement.
I am better now,” Colonel Falconer replied coldly, and just then the
door opened and Mrs. Finley came nervously into the room.

“Mamma, this is Colonel Falconer,” Pansy half whispered, adding
anxiously: “I have told you how good he has been to me, and I have told
him who and what I am, but briefly. Now I want you to tell him the
story of my willful girlhood, and the full extent of my sin.”

“Will you listen, sir?” asked the pale, gray-haired little woman
timidly.

A dark frown came between his eyebrows, but he answered impatiently:

“Yes.”

And so, in the little room where Pansy lay, pale with pain and
despair, the story of her girlhood was told to the husband she had
deceived--told kindly and gently by her mother’s lips, yet without
abating one jot of the truth.

“If she had taken her mother’s advice, sir, she would never have come
to this pass. I told her that a rich young man like Mr. Wylde wouldn’t
think of marrying a poor little factory girl, but she didn’t believe my
warning. She wouldn’t heed me,” sighed poor Mrs. Finley, when she had
told, in her pitiful little way, the story of Pansy’s willfulness and
disobedience.

But she, poor thing, looked pleadingly at her pale, silent husband.

“But you see how it was, don’t you?” she cried imploringly. “I loved
him so, and I fell under his fascinations so that I couldn’t help
myself; and I thought mother would be so pleased when she found out I
was his wife she would forgive all the rest. Ah, Heaven! I paid dearly,
dearly for that disobedience!”

He sat silent, rigid, looking and listening without a word, and Pansy
sobbed bitterly:

“Did I not say you would never forgive me? But I deserve it. I have
not one word to say for myself, only this: You will keep my miserable
secret, for when Norman Wylde charged me with my identity I denied it
bitterly. Oh, he must never know the truth, and if I recover from my
wound I will go away from here, Colonel Falconer, and never trouble
your peace again.”

He smiled a sad, derisive smile at those words, as if in mockery of her
promise, and then said:

“But I have not yet heard how you came by that wound.”

“My brother Willie swore that he would kill me for the disgrace that
I had brought on the honest name of Laurens. When I came back home to
see my sister he tried to carry out his threat. I do not blame him, nor
must you, for my stepfather had goaded him to madness by his taunts and
slurs. Poor boy! He is sorry now for his insane deed, and the world
must never know.”

He smothered some angry words under his dark mustache, for Pansy was
beginning to speak again in her soft, hopeless little voice:

“While I lay here waiting for Willie to bring you, I made some clever
little plans. Juliette went with the Wyldes, did she not?”

“Of course.”

“Then you will telegraph her to-morrow that I have changed my mind,
and will go North to some gay watering place, but that she will remain
under the chaperonage of Mrs. Wylde. My presence in this house can be
kept a dead secret until I get well enough to go away--into a convent,
perhaps--into lasting exile, certainly. Do not grieve, mamma,” as a
whimper of protest came from the little woman’s grieved heart. “You
will have your other children, you know.” Then, looking back at her
husband, went on plaintively: “In the meantime, you will have gone
away, and by and by you will write back to your friends that poor
little Pansy is dead and buried. You will come home to Juliette then,
and--after a while--you will forget.”

The plaintive voice broke, and Colonel Falconer sat still for a few
moments, lost in deep thought. Suddenly he spoke:

“You are very clever,” he said.

“I thought it all out for your sake. I was so anxious that no disgrace
should touch you,” she answered humbly.

“Poor little one!” he muttered; then rose and laid his hand solemnly
on her head. “Dear, you have been bitterly punished for your girlish
fault,” he said gravely; then, in tones vibrating with tenderness, he
added: “You are my beloved wife still. I forgive your deception, and I
will never forsake you.”



CHAPTER XXXIV. IMAGINARY DECEIT.


“Rosalind, what do you think of this?” asked Juliette, coming up to her
friend with an open letter in her hand.

It was the second day after her arrival at the White Sulphur Springs,
and they were out on the lawn before the grand hotel. All was
brightness and gayety. Throngs of beautiful women and handsome men lent
variety to the sylvan scene, and the merry music played by the band
made one’s step light and one’s heart gay.

“What is it, Juliette?” asked Miss Wylde curiously.

“A letter from my uncle, in which he explains the cause of his wife not
joining us here.”

“Is she not coming, then?” asked Mrs. Wylde, in a tone of regret.

“No.”

“But why not?”

“She was taken suddenly ill that afternoon, but would not send us
word, lest we should wait for her and be disappointed in going. She is
better now, and has taken up an idea that sea air would be of more
benefit to her than the springs,” replied Juliette, reading from her
uncle’s letter.

“Oh, I am sorry she will not join us. I had fallen in love with her,”
exclaimed Mrs. Wylde, and her daughter echoed:

“I had, too, mamma.”

A frown crossed Juliette’s pearl-fair face, and she read on slowly:

  “So I will take her away to the sea, and you can remain with Mrs.
  Wylde if she will have the kindness to chaperon you.”

She looked at Mrs. Wylde, and that lady said cordially:

“Your uncle ought to know that I will take great pleasure in doing
that.”

“Thank you,” cried Juliette; then, crushing the letter in her hand, she
said spitefully: “I believe Pansy had all that planned before, and did
not mean from the first to accompany us here.”

Mrs. Wylde and Rosalind looked startled.

“Why should she deceive us?” cried Rosalind.

“Oh, she had some hidden design in it, of course. She is naturally
deceitful. I never liked her from the first!” Juliette cried
peevishly, goaded to jealous anger by their declaration that they were
fond of Pansy.

“Well, you ought to know, of course, having lived in the same house
with her,” exclaimed Rosalind, in astonishment, adding: “But I never
should have supposed that dear little thing could be deceitful and
designing.”

“Nor I, for she always seemed so frank and open,” said her mother.
“Indeed, I had taken a great fancy to her.”

Every word stung Juliette more deeply, for she hated Pansy with an
intense hatred. She would have hated her for marrying her uncle if for
nothing else, but added to this was always her suspicion of Pansy’s
identity, and this fanned the fire of her rage into fury.

She made an excuse for leaving the Wyldes, that she might give full
vent, in the privacy of her own room, to the spite that possessed her,
and then Rosalind observed:

“Mamma, I do not think Juliette quite does justice to Mrs. Falconer.
She hates her because she married Colonel Falconer and disappointed her
expectations of getting all her uncle’s money.”

“That is it,” replied Mrs. Wylde. “Mrs. Falconer is without doubt a
charming woman, and Juliette’s suspicions of her deceitfulness have
their sole origin in nothing but envy and jealousy.”

While Juliette, alone in her own room, was saying bitterly:

“Oh, yes, they have fallen in love with her, have they? That is because
she is the rich Mrs. Falconer. They have no admiration to spare for
Norman’s sweetheart, the poor little tobacco-factory girl, who was
quite as beautiful, innocent, and charming as my uncle’s proud wife.”



CHAPTER XXXV. GENEROUS DEEDS.


When Colonel Falconer, out of the generosity of his great heart,
forgave his unhappy wife the deception she had practiced upon him, he
made up his mind that he would take her away from the fatal city of her
birth, never to return.

They would go abroad, and begin a new life, in which they would be all
in all to each other; and he would try to forget the dark shadow that
lay on his wife’s past, and make her happy as she had seemed before
they came back to Richmond and the tragedy of her buried sin rose to
overwhelm her again with its ignominy.

He made arrangements for keeping Pansy’s presence in her mother’s
house a secret from the world. Phebe was told only such facts as were
strictly necessary, and then installed as the faithful nurse of her
mistress.

Colonel Falconer himself came in disguise to visit her; and Doctor
Hewitt, who was the only one outside the house who was in the secret of
Pansy’s continued existence, never dreamed that the invalid was the
wife of one of the grandest, noblest men in the city, and mistress of a
palatial home on Franklin Street. He pitied her very much, and advised
her one day to remain with her mother and begin a new life.

Pansy wept bitterly, but made no reply, and he went away feeling very
sad over her probable future, for both she and Alice were so much
better now that there was no occasion for his further visits. He would
see the beautiful erring girl no more, and he feared that, with the
return of health and strength, she would drift back to her old sinful
life.

In the meantime, Colonel Falconer busied himself generously in trying
to brighten the lives of Pansy’s relatives.

In the first place, he had to bribe that wretch, Finley, to silence on
the fact that Pansy Laurens was still living. He accepted gladly enough
a much smaller sum than he had demanded from Pansy, fearing that if he
demurred he might not get anything.

Colonel Falconer, with his keen insight into human nature, soon saw
that Pansy’s mother was unhappy and ill-treated--a mere slave to her
sullen, brutal husband. He proposed to Pansy to settle a sum of money
on her mother that should be strictly her own, and the income from
which would enable her to lead a life of ease, independent of her
miserly husband.

“How shall I ever repay all your goodness?” Pansy cried, when he told
her that he had settled twenty-five thousand dollars on her mother, and
that Alice and Nora were to be sent to Staunton to boarding school. His
kind intentions toward Willie were all frustrated, for the young man,
ashamed and remorseful over what he had done, and standing in great awe
of his aristocratic brother-in-law, had abruptly left home the same
night on which he had wounded Pansy, and as yet no tidings had been
received from him.

The time came when Pansy was to leave home and mother for the second
time, and it was, indeed, a sad parting; yet not as bitter as the
first, for then Pansy was going alone into exile, but now there was a
strong arm and a brave heart between her and the world.

“Only love me, my poor little darling,” he had answered, gently and
gravely, in reply to her expressions of gratitude, and she had promised
that she would, while, at the same time, she contrasted his noble soul
with that of Norman Wylde.

“One so noble and high-minded, the other so false and cruel! Oh, Heaven
help me to tear his image from my weak womanly heart, and enshrine
there this good and noble husband!” she prayed passionately.



CHAPTER XXXVI. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.


Two months had passed since Colonel Falconer had taken Pansy away from
Richmond. They were summering quietly at a little mountain retreat
in the Adirondacks, but his mail was sent to Cape May, and, by an
arrangement with the postmaster there, was forwarded to him.

He had done this to conceal the place of his residence from Juliette
and others, not wishing that any prying eyes should intrude upon their
seclusion, for Pansy was still weak and delicate, and her nerves had
been sadly shattered by the trying scenes she had gone through.

They had taken a little cottage in the mountains, and, with Phebe and
a few servants, were keeping house in a simple, quiet way, waiting
for the roses to come back to Pansy’s cheeks, that the colonel might
leave her long enough to return to Virginia and settle up his business,
preparatory to taking up his future residence in Europe.

“You will not take Juliette with us? She hates me, and every word and
glance has a sting for me. She suspects my identity, in spite of all my
denials,” pleaded Pansy.

“She shall not go with us,” he said; then a thoughtful frown came
between his dark eyebrows. “But what under heaven shall I do with her?”
he asked.

“Let her stay in the house on Franklin Street with a chaperon,”
answered Pansy readily.

“That will do very well, I suppose; but I wish she would get married. I
should feel better satisfied over her then,” said the colonel, and they
both thought at once of Norman Wylde.

The color rose to her delicate pearl-fair face in a warm tide of
crimson, and Colonel Falconer grew pale, and smothered an oath between
his lips.

“Pansy, I feel like I ought to kill that fellow for his villainy to
you,” he said abruptly.

“Let him alone. Heaven will punish him for my wrongs,” she answered,
and then, clasping her beautiful hands imploringly, she wailed: “But,
oh, my poor, deserted little child, my heart aches when I think of him!
If I only had him with me I could be content.”

“Do not grow impatient, darling. I have promised to try to get the
child for you, but it must be done very quietly, for no one must
suspect that we had anything to do with abducting him. He must be
abducted, you understand that, do you not, Pansy?”

“Yes, for I know well that no amount of bribery would induce Mrs. Meade
to give him up, and I dare not assert my legal claim to him,” sighed
poor, unhappy Pansy.

He tried to comfort her, as if she had been a little child, and at last
she sobbed herself to sleep in his arms, and he held her thus for more
than an hour, gazing on the sweet, sad little face with eyes full of
love and pity.

“Poor little darling, how bitterly and undeservedly you have suffered,”
he thought, adding bitterly: “Curses on the false-hearted villain that
betrayed her innocent youth! I hope I may never meet him again, for if
I did I fear I should take vengeance into my own hands.”

The next morning, when the colonel’s valet brought in the mail,
it consisted of nothing but the New York papers. He had finished
breakfast, and took them out on the porch to read. Pansy followed
him, and sat down in her little rocking-chair to enjoy the beautiful
mountain scenery that lay outspread like a succession of pictures
before her eyes.

Colonel Falconer selected his favorite paper, lighted his morning
cigar, and disposed himself comfortably to read.

And none seeing the quiet, homelike picture, the handsome man, and the
lovely woman, seeming so calmly happy in their domestic life, would
have dreamed that a heavy storm cloud surcharged with woe was about to
burst in fury upon their heads.



CHAPTER XXXVII. THE STORM BREAKS.


Colonel Falconer opened his fresh paper, and the first thing that
caught his eyes were these words, in staring headlines:

  A VIRGINIA TRAGEDY,

  INVOLVING SOME OF THE F. F. V.’S WITH THE WORKING CLASSES, AND BEING
  THE CLIMAX TO A ROMANCE OF LOVE AND SORROW EQUAL TO ANY EVER EVOLVED
  FROM THE BRAIN OF A NOVELIST.

He uttered an exclamation of interest, and Pansy looked around.

“What is it, dear?” she asked languidly.

“Nothing--that is---- Well, you shall have the paper presently,” he
answered, and read on:

  Something more than three years ago there was a ripple of excitement
  in the fashionable society of Richmond over the fact that an
  engagement of marriage between two prominent people had been
  dissolved, owing to a sudden infatuation on the young man’s part for
  a beautiful, charming young girl, an employee at Arnell & Grey’s
  tobacco factory.

  The girl, though of poor parentage, and compelled to labor for
  her own support, was said to be wonderfully lovely, fairly well
  educated, and of so fair a character that it had never been sullied
  by a breath of scandal. But parents on either side proved unkind.
  The young man was forbidden to marry the little beauty, and she on
  her part had stern orders from a widowed mother never to hold any
  communication with her lover.

  In a few months afterward, the young man was sent on a mission
  to Europe, and it was supposed that all was at an end with the
  unfortunate love affair. But nine months later there was a scandalous
  story circulated about the young girl, to which a color of truth
  was lent by her suicide by drowning in the James River. At last,
  some of her clothing was found in the river, but her body was never
  recovered. At the same time a beautiful, newborn boy baby was left
  on the steps of the young man’s father, and adopted by the old
  housekeeper.

  Two years later the hero of that long-past love affair returned, and
  seeing the adopted child, conceived the idea that it was his own. He
  sought the mother of his dead love in order to ascertain the truth,
  but could not find her, she having married a second time and removed
  to another part of the city. Lately, in desperation, he placed a
  detective on the woman’s track, with the result that she was soon
  found, and a story of sorrow laid bare that maddened the hero of the
  story.

  He told the mother that her daughter had been his wife by a secret
  marriage in Washington, and by this declaration was laid bare the
  perfidy of a wicked stepfather and a slighted love, who for revenge
  had bribed the man to lie about the marriage. This man, Finley by
  name, was sent to Washington to verify Pansy Laurens’ declaration
  that she was the wife of Norman Wylde. He was bribed by a fair and
  slighted lady to declare that there had been no marriage, thus
  breaking the heart of the poor girl, who had never received a line
  from her young husband during his absence.

  When Norman Wylde learned of this horrible perfidy that had made
  of his beloved young wife a suicide, and of his legitimate child a
  foundling, he went wild with rage against the villain who had made
  these things possible, and struck him with all the fierce strength of
  an outraged arm. He fell heavily, and striking his head against the
  counter in his store was rendered unconscious by concussion of the
  brain.

  He is lying now in a state of coma, never having returned to
  consciousness since his fall. Norman Wylde is under heavy bonds
  pending the result of Finley’s injuries, but it is believed that a
  chivalrous Virginia jury will acquit him of blame in the vengeance he
  took against the destroyer of his domestic happiness.

Pansy turned her head at hearing a strange, choking sound, and saw her
husband with his head fallen backward, and his face convulsed with
pain, as it had been on the night when she made her confession to him.



CHAPTER XXXVIII. VISIONS OF HAPPINESS.


When Pansy saw the condition of her husband she uttered a scream of
terror that brought Colonel Falconer’s valet and her maid rushing to
the scene from the back of the cottage, where they had been flirting
with each other in default of something better to do.

Charles, the valet, immediately ran into the house for his master’s
drops, while Pansy lifted her husband’s head and pillowed it against
her breast. Phebe could do nothing but wring her hands and utter
excited ohs and ahs.

“You had better leave him to me, ma’am,” said Charles, with a composure
that betrayed his familiarity with these painful attacks. He took
her place with polite insistence, and then Pansy remembered that her
husband had seemed a little excited over something in the paper he was
reading.

She took the paper up from the floor, where it had fallen, and, in a
very few moments, had found out the cause of Colonel Falconer’s sudden
seizure.

Forgetful of everything but herself in the wild rush of joy that
overwhelmed her soul, she rushed upstairs to her room, and, throwing
herself into a chair, read and reread the precious paper, while her
love for Norman Wylde, so long repressed and denied, thrilled her whole
being again with inexpressible rapture.

“Oh, my love, my love! You were true to me--you loved me, you mourned
for me, for I was, indeed, your wife! The dark stain of disgrace is
effaced from me, and the whole world may know now that Pansy Laurens
was an honored wife, and that her child had a right to its father’s
name. Oh, my little Pet, my precious child, would that I could fly
this moment and take you by the hand and lead you to your beloved
father, telling him how much I love you both!” she sobbed passionately,
forgetting for the moment the man downstairs, whose heart was so bound
up in her.

It was not natural that she should remember him at that moment, for the
shock of joy had been so great as to blot out everything else for the
time being. Joy in Norman’s constancy and love, and horror at the sin
of Mr. Finley and Juliette Ives, filled her whole mind.

She forgot Colonel Falconer and his illness, forgot that she was
another man’s wife, forgot everything but her love for Norman Wylde,
the young husband from whom she had been sundered by such a cruel fate.

“Oh, my love, my darling, would that you were here now,” she kept
murmuring over and over, forgetful of the lapse of time, until she was
startled from her blissful reverie by a low tap upon the door.

“Come in!” she exclaimed, and the door unclosed, admitting Colonel
Falconer, who was ghastly pale, and staggered unsteadily across the
threshold.

“Oh!” cried Pansy, in a heart-piercing tone, for everything rushed over
her at once at the sight of his haggard, pain-drawn face.

“Poor child! You were so happy that you had forgotten me,” he said
gently.

“Forgive me!” she sighed remorsefully, and then suddenly the pretty
dark head fell back against her chair, and she became unconscious.

Colonel Falconer made no effort to revive her. He stood by her side,
gazing with gloomy eyes at the white, unconscious face, and at length
he muttered:

“Poor little one! I wish that you would die now, just as you are; then
I should never have the pain of resigning you to one who has a better
right to you than I have, and in whose love you will utterly forget him
who has had no thought but of you since first he saw your beautiful
face.”

But he did not have his wish granted, for presently Pansy revived of
herself, and looked up dreamily into his face.

“I--I--fainted, did I not?” she murmured slowly. Then, remembering his
illness, she asked: “Are you better?”

“Yes,” he answered, but his face was ghastly as he said it. Making a
brave effort for calmness, he added: “You stayed away so long, Pansy,
that I grew uneasy, and came to seek you.”

“While I selfishly forgot you in my absorption. Oh, forgive me! forgive
me!” she cried remorsefully.

“There is nothing to forgive. Your news was startling enough to excuse
you for everything,” he replied patiently. Drawing a chair near her,
he continued wistfully: “It must have been a great shock of joy to you,
Pansy, to find that Norman Wylde was your true husband, instead of the
false-hearted wretch we deemed him.”

“Yes,” she murmured faintly.

“And you will wish to be restored to him at once, dear?” he continued,
masking with a brave effort the pain he felt in speaking those words.

She started wildly.

“But--I--belong--to--you!” she faltered.

“No, dear. The ceremony that bound you to me is void in law, since you
had a husband living when I married you. You are free of any claim of
mine. Shall you go at once to him, or will you write for him to come
for you?”

She read his keen anxiety in his ghastly face, and it came to her
suddenly that her happiness would prove a deathblow to this good man,
who was so devoted to her that it seemed impossible for his enfeebled
heart to bear the shock of her loss.

Looking up at him with troubled eyes, she said:

“Leave me here alone till morning, that I may decide what is best for
me to do.”



CHAPTER XXXIX. REACHING A DECISION.


Colonel Falconer would never forget as long as he lived, nor would
Pansy, the awful suspense of that night. He spent it among the
mountains, walking hard all night, in order to overcome his misery by
sheer physical weakness. She spent it on her knees by her bedside,
praying.

It seemed to her that it would be wrong to desert Colonel Falconer and
go back to her dear love, her faithful husband, even though she really
belonged to him, for it would surely break Colonel Falconer’s heart.

“And how could I be happy even with my beloved Norman and our darling
child, if I knew that I had caused the death of one who loved me so
well, and who had died for my sake?” the generous young wife kept
saying over and over to herself, and resolutely shutting out of her
heart all thoughts of the happiness she could have if she returned to
Norman.

Passionately as she loved Norman, her young heart had become so inured
to sorrow, that she was capable of making a great sacrifice for
another’s sake, and at last she decided that for Colonel Falconer’s
sake she would bear the burden of a secret sorrow till the day of her
death.

“Norman believes me dead long ago, and he need never be undeceived,”
she thought. “Then, too, he will have our sweet little boy to comfort
him, while I will pray for them both every night, and feel that I
have done right to sacrifice my one chance of earthly happiness for
another’s sake.”

Her resolve did not falter, although it had cost her so much to make
it, and in the morning, when she went down to breakfast, she was pale
as a lily, and the blue circles under her downcast eyes hinted at
bitter tears shed in the lonely vigils of the night.

Colonel Falconer had come in an hour before from his wild mountain
tramp, and appeared at breakfast freshly dressed, but wretchedly pale
and weary-looking, with a despairing look in his eyes that it was
impossible to hide.

The unhappy pair made a slight pretense at eating, then went out on the
porch together, and Pansy said quietly:

“Let us walk up the mountain road a little way, that no one may
overhear what I wish to say to you.”

They walked away out of earshot of Charles and Phebe, who had no idea
that anything was wrong between their master and mistress, and then
Colonel Falconer asked sadly:

“Have you made up your mind, dear?”

“Yes; I shall stay with you.”

He stared at her, speechless with wonder, until the warm color rose to
her face; then he exclaimed:

“My dear Pansy, how could you do that? I explained to you, did I not,
that our marriage was not legal?”

Placing her trembling little hand on his arm, she whispered:

“I understand all that. What I meant was that--you--should--help me--to
secure a divorce--from Norman Wylde--that I might quietly remarry you.
It could be done, could it not?”

His face shone with happiness and love as he replied:

“It would be easy enough, I think; but, Pansy, darling, it would not
be right for me to permit this sacrifice on your part.”

“I will not permit you to call it a sacrifice. I love you, and I prefer
to cast my lot with yours,” she answered truly.



CHAPTER XL. A GREAT SACRIFICE.


“Heaven help me, for I am scarcely brave enough to refuse this noble
sacrifice of yours, Pansy,” groaned Colonel Falconer. “Oh, my little
love, are you quite sure you will never regret this--never wish for
Norman Wylde and your lost happiness?”

Clasping her slender white hands tenderly around his arm, and lifting
her sad white face, with all a woman’s tenderness shining out of her
soulful eyes, she replied earnestly:

“The happiness you speak of could not be mine, for if I left you for
Norman the thought of you would always sadden me so that I should
suffer from remorse and anxiety. I love you, though not with the wild
passion I felt for my first love. But this deep, steady affection, born
of admiration for your manliness and your many virtues, is so strong
that it would divide the allegiance I should owe to Norman. You would
be ever in my thoughts, for you need me so much, and would miss me so
much, while he has long believed me dead and could bear the shock of
losing me better. Therefore, if you will help me about the divorce, I
will be your wife again as soon as possible.”

“I will send the most clever lawyer in New York to you, Pansy, and you
can commit your case to him. Bless you for your noble decision! I did
not dare hope for such a sacrifice on your part, but I love you so well
that I have not courage to refuse it.”

She bowed her head in silence, and he continued:

“Of course you understand, darling, that I must leave you to-day and
remain away from you until the divorce is procured. Do you wish to
remain here quietly with Phebe, Charles, and the other servants, or
have you any other plans?”

She was silent a few moments, then she answered:

“I will remain here.”

He left the mountains for New York City that day, and on the next
she was visited by an eminent lawyer, who took her case in hand, and
assured her that he believed there would be no difficulty in securing a
divorce.

When he had gone she fell sobbing on the floor of her chamber, crying
out:

“Oh, my lost love, my lost love!”

Colonel Falconer wrote her in a few days, saying that he would go to
White Sulphur Springs, to try to make some arrangements for the future
of Juliette Ives.

“I shall never care for her in the same fashion as I did before I
learned her treachery to you and Norman Wylde,” he wrote. “But she has
no living relative but me, and she is dependent on me for support, and,
for her mother’s sake, I will not shirk the responsibility.”

He found his pretty niece cool, impudent, defiant. She utterly denied
her complicity in Mr. Finley’s crime.

“I did not even know the man. Never saw him in my life!” she affirmed.

He was staggered by her effrontery and scarcely knew what to say, and
she went on eagerly:

“Dear uncle, please tell me the truth: You have found out at last that
your wife is really Pansy Laurens, have you not?”

“Nonsense!” he answered sharply; and she opened wide her pale-blue
eyes, exclaiming:

“Is it possible she can still deny it, after finding out that she was
really Norman’s wife? Ah, I see it all now! She will stay with you
because you are rich and her legal husband is poor.”

Colonel Falconer’s eyes flashed wrathfully.

“Beware, Juliette, how you try me too far! Remember that you are
helpless and penniless, except for my bounty!”

“And because I will not cringe and fawn upon the lowbred creature
you have made your wife, although, unfortunately, the tie is not a
legal one, you threaten to deprive me of the pittance sufficient for
my support! Very well, I can go and work in Arnell & Grey’s tobacco
factory. You will not consider it a disgrace for your niece to work
there, as the woman you call your wife was an employee there for
many years!” she burst out spitefully, her virago temper all aflame,
and goading her to such rebellion that she actually shook her little
jeweled fist in his face.

She knew his good heart and generous nature so well that she believed
she could defy him with impunity. He would not dare cast her helpless
on the world, no matter what she did to him or the wife he idolized.

But her insults to Pansy had struck a fire of rage in his nature, and,
while his face whitened with pain and his eyes gleamed with anger, he
turned on her, and said sternly:

“Since you are so willing to earn your own support, I wash my hands
of a most unwelcome burden! Go into a tobacco factory as soon as you
please, and I hope you may be industrious enough to retain a position
there as long as Pansy Laurens did!”

With those words, the offended gentleman stalked out of the presence
of Juliette, who comprehended instantly that she had gone too far in
her spiteful defiance, and that she must either humiliate herself by
apologizing or go to work, as she had threatened, to earn her own
living.

It did not take her a minute to decide which of these alternatives to
choose, and as soon as the door banged to behind the irate colonel she
jerked it open and flew swiftly down the corridor, arresting his quick
footsteps by clasping both hands around his arm.

“Oh, uncle, dear uncle, come back and forgive me! I am sorry I wounded
your feelings. I did not mean it; but every one had deserted me, and I
felt so miserable!” she panted eagerly, as she clung to his arm.

He stopped short and looked suspiciously into her false face.

“Where is Mrs. Wylde?” he asked.

“Come back, and I will tell you. We might be overheard here,” she
replied, looking uneasily down the length of the broad hotel corridor,
and very unwillingly he accompanied her back to her room. Then she said:

“Mrs. Wylde and Rosalind have gone back to Richmond, and I am here
alone with my maid.”

“She promised to chaperon you,” he said, frowning.

“I know,” whimpered Juliette; “but we quarreled dreadfully. They--they
actually believed that man Finley’s falsehood about me, although I
denied it bitterly. The truth is that they are the ones in fault,
for they sent Norman off to London on a false scent, just to break
up his love affair; but now they have the meanness to say that they
would never have sent him if they had known he was actually married
to the girl,” panted Juliette angrily, adding: “So we had a bitter
quarrel when they refused to believe my story. And Mrs. Wylde said she
hoped you would take me from under her care soon, as she was tired of
chaperoning a girl who had brought such trouble on her poor son. I told
her I would never speak to her again, so then she and Rosalind packed
up and went back, as Judge Wylde had telegraphed for them. She sent me
a note, asking if I cared to go back with them, and I declined. But
they set every one against me. I am so stared at and snubbed by people
since Finley’s lies against me were published that I cannot bear to go
outside my room,” concluded Juliette, going into hysterical sobs.

“This is very bad. I do not know what I shall ever do with you,
Juliette,” sighed the colonel, in dismay.

“I shall go back to you, of course,” she sobbed.

“No; that plan will not answer any longer. I can never have you again
as a member of my family,” he replied firmly.

She could scarcely resist the impulse to cry out against him with the
sharpest reproaches, but wisely restrained herself, and presently he
said:

“I will remain with you here for a week, Juliette, and in that time I
will decide regarding your future.”

That same day he wrote to Pansy and explained the situation to her,
asking for her advice in the matter.

When Pansy heard of the sad plight of the girl whose wickedness had
wrought her so much woe she rejoiced at first, thinking that Juliette
had met her just reward for her sin.

Then kinder, more pitiful thoughts intervened, and at length she wrote
to Colonel Falconer:

  Send Juliette here to me, and I will stand her friend if she will
  treat me with proper respect.

He read those words to Juliette, who curled her lip, but did not
refuse, for the contempt of all her old associates in her little social
world had so cowed her that she was only too happy to accept Pansy’s
offer.

When they met again, Pansy said determinedly:

“Miss Ives, there shall be no further concealments between us. I am
Pansy Laurens, as you thought, but I am going to procure an immediate
divorce from Norman Wylde, that I may be remarried to your uncle,
Colonel Falconer. Wait!” as Juliette was about to make an excited
remonstrance. “It will be against your own interest to betray me, for
your uncle’s will is made in my favor now, and if you go against me I
will use my strong influence to have you sent adrift penniless.”



CHAPTER XLI. A FALSE WITNESS.


Juliette Ives was walking along the mountain road just a few rods from
the cottage, kicking up the dead leaves from the ground at every step,
and frowning discontentedly.

“It is almost two months since I came to this place, and it is as
dreary as a prison. I hope we shall certainly get away this week, or
I shall die of ennui,” she was muttering angrily to herself, when
suddenly she came face to face with a man who was hurrying in the
direction of the cottage--Norman Wylde.

It was the first time he had seen Juliette since Finley’s sullen
confession had convicted her of such a treacherous deed, and Norman’s
brow grew dark at sight of the fair blond face, with its light-blue
eyes, and pale golden tresses flying loosely in the wind under a
picturesque little scarlet cap, for Juliette was always vain and
coquettish, and even here in this secluded retreat, where she expected
to see no one, paid particular attention to her personal appearance.
But her charms were all unheeded by Norman Wylde, who lifted his hat
with grave courtesy, and was about to pass by when she arrested him
with a pleading cry:

“Norman--Mr. Wylde!”

He paused, but with an impatient gesture, and, coming close up to him,
she said eagerly:

“I cannot let pass this opportunity of clearing myself from the foul
imputation cast upon me by that wicked wretch, Finley. Oh, Norman, I
swear to you that I had nothing to do with his sin! I did not even know
the man.”

She never forgot how handsome and how scornful her lost lover looked as
he fixed his splendid, piercing black eyes on her false face. Regarding
her with supreme contempt, he answered:

“Unfortunately for your denial, Miss Ives, Finley had written proofs in
his possession that proved your guilt clearly.”

“I deny it in spite of all his proofs,” she cried desperately, but,
smiling scornfully still, he answered:

“As you please, Miss Ives; but permit me to pass. I am anxious to meet
my wife!”

“You have no wife!” she exclaimed, with such spiteful yet earnest
emphasis that he paused again, and said:

“Deny it as you will; but I have proved to the world’s satisfaction
that Pansy Laurens is my wife, and a week ago, when Mr. Finley
recovered from the long stupor and loss of memory that followed upon
his fall, he told me my wife still lived, in the person of Mrs.
Falconer. I wondered why she had not come at once to me on learning
that she was truly my wife. But, guessing that it was owing to
her sensitive, retiring nature, I set myself to work to learn her
whereabouts. I learned that she had separated from Colonel Falconer,
and was living here in strict retirement. I hurried here at once.”

“In spite of all that, I repeat my assertion: You have no wife!”
answered Juliette, with savage emphasis and barbarous delight in the
torture she was inflicting on his heart.

“My Heaven!” he cried, shuddering. “You do not mean to tell me that
Pansy is dead!”

“No; it is worse than that.” She paused a moment, watching him keenly,
the better to enjoy her triumph, then added: “She has procured a
divorce from you.”

Then she shrank in spite of herself, for the rage and despair on that
darkly handsome face frightened her, defiant as she was, and his voice
seemed to breathe menace as he shouted hoarsely:

“It is false! False as your treacherous heart, Juliette Ives!” And,
with the words, he rushed madly from her toward the cottage, wild to
know the truth from Pansy’s own beautiful lips.

Juliette followed slowly after, with a white face of wrath and envy,
for she well knew that, though Pansy was lost to Norman forever, he
would never love another.

Phebe went up to her mistress with a message from Mr. Wylde, and, after
a long interval, returned with a brief, ambiguous note:

  I refuse to see you. I received my decree of divorce this morning,
  and to-morrow I shall be married to Colonel Falconer. Forgive me,
  Norman, for I have acted for the best as far as I could see my duty.
  Let our child comfort you. Love him, and make up to him for his
  mother’s loss. I go abroad in a few days, never to return. Forget me
  if you can, and if not, remember me with pity. Farewell forever, and
  may Heaven bless you!

  PANSY.

Crushing the perfumed sheet in his hand, he staggered across the
doorway with a face like a corpse. A white hand fluttered down on his
coat sleeve, and tender blue eyes gazed into his agonized face.

“You see now!” said Juliette triumphantly. “She was like the majority
of women. She cared more for Colonel Falconer’s money than for her
husband’s love! Oh, Norman,” her voice sank into a low, pleading
cadence, “will you not forget her now and make up our wretched quarrel?
Remember, we loved each other before you ever saw her face!”

“I never loved you--never! And for the misery your sin has brought me
I curse you!” he answered. “I have lost her, but it was through your
treachery at the beginning that she was forced into a position where
her noble nature made her sacrifice herself and me to a mistaken sense
of duty. Ah, I understand her generous soul! Do not prate to me of
gold. She cared nothing for that, but, in her pity for him, she has
broken both her heart and mine.” And, throwing off her touch as though
it were a serpent’s coil, he rushed away.



CHAPTER XLII. REMARRIED.


In a short time the words were spoken that made Pansy Laurens for
a second time a wife, and, though it was like a deathblow to her
happiness, she bore herself with proud calmness that the good man
by her side should have no cause to suspect that she had sacrificed
herself for his sake.

In a few days more they went abroad, taking Juliette with them, as also
the valet and the two maids. Several months were spent in Italy, then
when winter was past they traveled for several months. When autumn came
round again Colonel Falconer began to think of purchasing a home and
settling down in the land of his adoption.

Juliette was behaving herself quite well; that is to say, she was
treating her uncle’s wife with a show of respect, though hating her as
bitterly as ever in her secret heart.

At times she complained to her uncle that she did not wish to remain
always abroad, but he had only to remind her of the snubbing she had
received from her friends at home to reduce her to instant silence and
submission.

At such times she would recall the Wyldes with bitter chagrin, and she
made up her mind that she would marry a title if she could possibly
compass it, and then go to Virginia to spend her honeymoon, in order
to mortify those of her old friends who had dared to disapprove of her
because of the revenge she had taken on her rival, the poor working
girl, Pansy Laurens.

She was anxious to get away from the guardianship of her uncle and his
wife. To live always with the rival who had triumphed over her, and to
have those triumphs renewed daily--for Pansy had been a decided success
wherever she had appeared in society, and the society journals always
mentioned them as “Colonel Falconer’s beautiful bride, and his pretty
niece, Miss Ives”--was too bitter to her pride.

“I am tired of it all! I have eaten humble pie till I loathe the
taste,” Juliette muttered discontentedly; and when at last old Sir John
Crowley, who was as yellow as a pumpkin, having spent the best years of
his life in India before succeeding to a baronetcy, proposed marriage
to her, she accepted him joyfully.

“Oh, Juliette, that old man! Why, he is past sixty, and yellow and ugly
and cross!” Pansy cried, in dismay; but Juliette tossed her head, and
answered:

“You married an old man for his money, and I’m going to marry one for a
title and money, too, that’s all!”

“But I have heard that he isn’t rich--that the title is almost a barren
honor. He has nothing but a small estate in Cornwall. You will have to
nurse him half your time, as he is in poor health.”

“I don’t care, and I wish you would mind your own business! Uncle has
promised me a marriage portion, anyhow, and that shall be strictly
settled on myself. Sir John is so much in love with me that he’ll agree
to anything,” Juliette retorted. But events proved differently. Sir
John would not agree to the proposition, and so Juliette, in a huff,
declared the match off, vowing that the baronet was a wretched old
fortune hunter.

Following hard upon the breaking of this engagement, which occurred in
the second winter after Pansy’s remarriage to Colonel Falconer, came a
very sad event.

A beautiful villa at Florence had been purchased, and the small
family had settled down there for the winter. It was a very pleasant
neighborhood, and one evening they were entertaining a small party of
friends, when the colonel suddenly complained of severe pains, and a
physician was at once summoned to his side. But medical skill proved
vain, for within an hour he died, as Juliette’s mother had died, of
heart failure.

He comprehended that the end was near, for, between the paroxysms of
pain, he whispered to Pansy:

“You have made this past year very happy, my darling. I have never had
cause to believe that you cherished a single regret.”



CHAPTER XLIII. A LOVELY WIDOW.


“I suppose you will go home now and marry Norman Wylde!” cried Juliette
spitefully.

It was almost immediately after the funeral, and the sad young widow
turned a shocked face upon the heartless speaker.

“Juliette, how can you be so cruel? Do you think I do not grieve for my
noble husband?” she exclaimed.

“Norman Wylde could comfort you very easily in your grief,” was the
unfeeling reply that sent Pansy from the room in bitter tears.

Juliette was the trial of Pansy’s daily life. She had tried all in vain
to overcome the girl’s jealous dislike of her, but it seemed a hopeless
task, and she longed for the time to come when she would marry and
leave her in peace.

“I believe she would murder me if she thought she could do so without
being discovered,” she thought sometimes fearfully.

She did not dream that her patient endurance of her dreadful incubus
and her never-failing goodness had all along been having their effect
on Juliette, although she struggled bitterly against that saving
influence.

Just now she felt more bitter than usual, for, in addition to the fact
that she believed that Pansy and Norman would be reunited in a few
weeks, she had found out that her uncle’s will was made solely in his
wife’s favor, with the exception of a legacy to his niece, the amount
of which was to be decided by Pansy.

The next time Juliette saw Pansy she began to tease her about the will.

“It was a shame for uncle to treat me so shabbily. He might have known
you would put me off with just a few hundreds!” she cried spitefully.

Pansy sighed at Juliette’s unrelenting hate, and answered patiently:

“Colonel Falconer understood me better than you do, Juliette, or he
would never have trusted your future to me. When his affairs are
settled there will not be more than a hundred thousand dollars left, as
he made several investments lately that resulted disastrously. But of
that hundred thousand I shall give you fifty thousand.”

“You do not mean it!” Juliette cried incredulously.

“Yes,” Pansy answered; and for a minute there was a silence, which the
young widow broke in a tremulous, pleading voice.

“Perhaps,” she said, “when this money is settled on you, Juliette,
it will please you best to leave me, and make a home for yourself
elsewhere?”

“You want me to go away--you are tired of me!” Juliette cried, in a
high, resentful key; and then Pansy lifted her head and looked at her
with those sad pansy-blue eyes, in which tears of grief were standing
thickly.

“Oh, Juliette,” she sobbed, “I--I--only want peace, and you make my
life so dreary and unhappy with your unrelenting hate!”

Juliette did not answer. She gave a choking gasp and rushed from the
room.

Pansy saw her no more for several hours; then she entered her boudoir
with a pale face and very red eyes, and said humbly:

“Pansy, please do not ask me to leave you! I love you--yes, love you,
in spite of all my wickedness. Your goodness and sweetness have been
growing on me for years, although I tried to steel myself to their
noble influence, and your words just now opened my eyes and showed me
my heart. I repent all my wickedness toward you, and beg you to forgive
me for my share in your unhappiness. Henceforth I will love you as
dearly as my uncle loved you, and I will do all that I can to atone for
my heartless behavior in the past.”

“Oh, Juliette!” Pansy cried gladly. For it was an exquisite
satisfaction to her to feel that she had conquered Juliette’s hate at
last by her gentleness and patience.

She accepted Juliette’s repentance by a gentle kiss on her white brow.



CHAPTER XLIV. A MOTHER’S YEARNING.


Pansy wrote to her mother of Colonel Falconer’s death, and in return
received some unexpected news.

Mr. Finley, after he recovered from the long spell that had followed
upon his fall and the injury to his head, had become more brutal and
morose than ever, and made life with him very hard to bear. Finally
he announced his intention of selling out all his property and going
to California to invest the proceeds in real estate. He told his
long-suffering wife that he was tired of her, and did not propose to
take her with him. She acquiesced very thankfully in this decision, and
the brute had gone away several months before, and no more had been
heard of him, much to her joy and relief, for she had long ago repented
her unfortunate second marriage.

Soon after Finley left, Willie had returned, and, to her surprise, he
had been hard at work in New York, and brought back his savings. He
was bitterly repentant for his wicked deed, and would write to his
sister and tell her how much he had suffered from remorse. Mrs. Finley
added that she was going to help her son set up business for himself,
that he might marry little Kate North, to whom he was now engaged, with
the free consent of her parents.

“Poor brother Willie! I am glad he is going to be so happy,” thought
Pansy, without a shadow of anger against the hot-headed boy; and then
she read on, and found that Alice and Nora were still at school in
Staunton. They were learning fast, and sent much love to their sister,
and grieved for the good brother-in-law who had been so generous to
them all.

“But why does she not say something about my boy, my little Pet, who,
perhaps, has some other name, now that Norman knows he is his son?”
thought Pansy impatiently; but on turning the next page she read these
words:

  Judge Wylde died last week, and they say he left a pretty penny to
  his family, though I don’t think Norman needs it much, he’s getting
  rich so fast with his law business. He works so hard, they say,
  that he has no time for any one but his child. He has given it the
  name of Charley for your poor, dead father, which I think was quite
  nice of him. I see the little fellow often, as the Wyldes are quite
  friendly with me; also that good Mrs. Meade, who says she was quite
  certain from the first that things would turn out as they have. I
  haven’t seen Norman since your husband died. I don’t know how he
  takes it, but I hope you and he will make it up some time, as it
  can’t do Colonel Falconer--poor, dear saint--any good for you to stay
  always a widow. But forgive me, dear daughter, for I know your sorrow
  is too deep for me to hint at such things yet.

Pansy sat silent for a long time, brooding over those words, and her
breast heaved with many hopeless sighs.

“No one need ever think of that,” she thought mournfully. “Norman will
never forgive me for what I did. He will think always that it was for
Colonel Falconer’s money, not for pity’s sake.”

And at thought of her little child, her beautiful Charley, out of whose
love she had been tricked and cheated by her wicked stepfather, Pansy
wept most bitterly and longingly.

“Whether he ever forgives me or not, I must see my child sometimes,”
she thought; but she determined that she would spend her year of
mourning at the villa. Life was not so unhappy since Juliette had
repented her wickedness and fallen in love with her uncle’s wife. They
had become fast friends, and Juliette now prayed earnestly that the
time would come when Pansy would again be Norman’s wife.



CHAPTER XLV. SUPREME JOY.


A year went slowly past, and found Pansy and Juliette still at the
villa; but it was not likely that the latter would be there much
longer, for she had lately made the acquaintance of a handsome young
man, a rich New Yorker, who had wintered in Italy, and who had been so
very much smitten with the charms of Miss Ives that he had proposed
marriage on very short acquaintance, and had been accepted, for he was
the first man who had ever touched her heart since she had lost Norman
Wylde.

In truth, Juliette was very much altered for the better. She had
taken gentle Pansy for her model, and was fast becoming a changed and
improved woman. Not content with owning her fault to Pansy, she had
written to the Wyldes, mother and son, and confessed her folly and her
repentance, declaring that she now loved Pansy as fondly as she had
once hated her, and that her dearest wish now was for the happiness of
the two she had injured so much.

When Arthur Osborne first declared his love to Juliette she had a hard
struggle with her pride, but before she gave him her answer she told
him the whole story of her folly and sin and repentance.

“If you had known this you would not have asked me to be your wife,”
she said sadly.

But she was mistaken, for he reiterated his offer, declaring that he
admired her frankness and believed in her repentance.

“I will help you to forget your bitter past,” he said; then Juliette
gave him a blushing yes.

The betrothal was a month old when, one day, as Pansy sat alone in the
drawing-room of her beautiful home, some visitors were announced, and
Mrs. Wylde, with her daughter and a beautiful little boy, entered the
room.

Pansy sprang up with a little startled cry, and was immediately half
smothered in kisses and embraces from all three.

“Forgive me for my share in your past unhappiness. I had never seen
you, and believed you to be a coarse, ignorant girl, unsuited to my son
in every way,” murmured Mrs. Wylde regretfully.

“Let us forget the past,” answered the noble girl she had injured, as
she drew her child to her breast, wondering, yet not daring to ask,
about his father.

Juliette came in presently, and they met her with the cordiality of old
friends. Then she looked at Pansy.

“Norman is here, too,” she said smilingly, “but I think he was doubtful
of a welcome, and he stopped in the summerhouse. Will you meet him
halfway, Pansy?”

The blush that rose to her face betrayed her heart without words, and
Mrs. Wylde said tenderly:

“Go, dear; we will excuse you.”

Juliette took her trembling hand and led her to the door. Then she
kissed her fondly.

“Bless you both, dear!” she said earnestly, and went back to the guests.

But little Charley, now almost five years old, followed his newfound
mother.

Norman was waiting in the flower-wreathed summerhouse, and at one
glance into each other’s eyes the two read each other’s heart.

“You will not send me away again, my darling!” he murmured, as he
clasped her to his heart in passionate love.

A few weeks sufficed for their second courtship. They were married on
the same day with Arthur Osborne and Juliette Ives. Both the brides
looked wonderfully beautiful, and both the bridegrooms handsome and
happy.

In the spring they all went back to America. Juliette’s home was to be
in New York, but not the least of Pansy’s pleasures was the fact that
she would spend the rest of her life among the dear friends and old
familiar scenes of her beloved Richmond.

THE END.

No. 1165 of the NEW EAGLE SERIES, entitled “His Unbounded Faith,”
by Charlotte M. Stanley, is a fascinating story. The reader will
sympathize with the heroine in the storms of hate and jealousy that
rage around her, but they will breathe a sigh of relief when she finds
a secure haven in her husband’s love and faith.

       *       *       *       *       *

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.

The following change was made:

p. 118: illegible words at the end of the page were assumed to be “so
that I” (long drive to-day so that I)



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Love Conquers Pride: or, Where Peace Dwelt" ***

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