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: