“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: