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.