“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.