When all were seated, Pansy saw that he had retreated to a distant corner, and, as the conversation proceeded, he took little or no part in it. He was almost stricken speechless by her marvelous likeness to one he had loved and lost, and, but for the interval for thought afforded him while she was singing, he could not have preserved his calmness; he must have spoken out on the spur of the moment, and claimed her, as Mr. Finley had done, as Pansy Laurens.
When he had first beheld the beautiful face in profile from the door his senses had almost reeled; but before her song ceased he had persuaded himself that he was mistaken in thinking her the counterpart of Pansy. She was more beautiful, more distinguished-looking. Pansy had been very shy and bashful, but this girl held her small head high. There was a likeness—a great one—but nothing more. One was the wayside rose, the other the cultivated flower.
From his distant seat he watched the lovely face and form with a throbbing heart. How the rich, creamy-hued robe and diamond locket set off the flowerlike face, with its background of dark, rippling hair. The beautiful white hands played with some rose petals she had plucked from her belt, and he noticed how small they were, with pink palms and finger tips, dimpled at the joint, like a child’s. Pansy had had just such dainty hands, although she was only a working girl.
“I wish I had not come,” he thought, with bitter pain. “Mrs. Falconer’s face has brought everything back. Oh, how am I to bear it? Does Juliette see the likeness, I wonder? Surely not, or else she could scarcely endure to be haunted so by the image of one she hated.”
Pansy, on her part, felt a bitter triumph in seeing that he took such slight notice of Juliette. Surely he did not care for her, else his eyes would have wandered to her face sometimes, for it was plain to be seen that she worshiped him.
“He does not care for her,” Pansy said to herself, as she saw how carelessly he answered the remarks Juliette addressed to him. “He has a fickle heart.”
And she gazed with silent admiration at her noble husband, who loved her so devotedly, and who had not been too proud to marry a simple working girl and lift her to his own station in life. Although she did not love him in a romantic fashion, she admired his noble, manly nature more and more daily.
And she found a bitter satisfaction in seeing that her betrayer did not look so gay and debonair as in the past. He was certainly altered; his face was pale and grave, his eyes were sad and serious.
CHAPTER XXI.
A RETURN CALL.
Something more than a week after the Wyldes had called upon the Falconers, Juliette suggested, one day, that it was time that they should return the call.