“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.