“Goodness, Uncle Falconer, I hope your wife isn’t a socialist!” exclaimed Juliette, shrugging her shoulders.
He frowned, and answered:
“My wife is an angel, Juliette, and has the kindest, tenderest heart in the world. I’m glad to hear her speak up for our Richmond working girls. I have the greatest respect for them all, as well as sympathy for the poverty that makes their lot in life so hard. I know also that many of them are from good families that were reduced to poverty by the late war.”
Juliette turned her back on him impatiently, and addressed herself to Pansy:
“You remember how foolishly I behaved last night, taking you for a girl that disgraced her family and drowned herself three years ago?”
“Yes,” Pansy answered coldly.
“Well, she was a tobacco-factory girl, and worked at Arnell & Grey’s. Her name was Pansy Laurens—similarity in names, as well as faces, you see. Your name is Pansy, too, isn’t it? She was a low, designing creature, and, by her boldness, caused a rupture between my betrothed and myself, over which he grieves to this day.”
CHAPTER XIX.
A POISONED LIFE.
Bravely as Pansy carried off everything, she began to fear that her life with Juliette Ives would never be one of friendship or peace, for the girl seemed to bristle at all points with poisoned arrows for her uncle’s wife.
Not that Juliette was outwardly repellent. She had false, sweet smiles in plenty for Pansy; but she had also the sharpest claws beneath her silky fur. She lost no opportunity of wounding, when she could do so with impunity.