“Norman Wylde has lived a very fast life, you know,” Juliette answered. “I have long suspected that the child is his own, flung upon his doorstep in desperation by some one of his victims. Perhaps he suspects, perhaps he does not—but I feel almost certain of its parentage.”
“And the family?” Pansy asked faintly.
“I do not believe they suspect anything. If they did, they would not permit it to be kept beneath their roof. They would be perfectly furious,” replied Juliette, with an air of certainty, and watching Pansy closely for some signs of emotion.
But the beautiful girl seemed to grow suddenly weary of the subject, for she said:
“I wonder if my trousseau will do for the White Sulphur, or if I ought to order anything new?”
“You will not need a new thing, nor shall I, as I am in mourning, and cannot dance this season,” replied Juliette.
As their carriage rolled along Grace Street, they saw Norman Wylde among the pedestrians on the pavement. He lifted his hat, and passed on without stopping, to the chagrin of Juliette, who hoped he would stop and chat with her a while.
Her conscience did not reproach her for the falsehoods she had uttered against his fair fame, although she knew that there was not a purer, more high-minded young man in the whole city. But while she was still uncertain as to the identity of her uncle’s wife, it suited her best to pretend that Norman Wylde was dissolute and guilty. Although she suspected that little Pet was the child of Pansy Laurens, she was not certain, and she did not wish Mrs. Falconer to believe it.
“She will, if she is really Pansy Laurens, hate him more if she believes that the child is some other woman’s,” she thought shrewdly, and smiled when she saw the signs of trouble that Pansy could not wholly disguise on her fair face.
Poor Pansy! Her heart was well-nigh breaking, and when she reached home she feigned a headache, that she might have an excuse for shutting herself up in her own room to think over the events of to-day, which had aroused suspicions never to be laid again until they were either confirmed or proved baseless. The dark eyes of the little child had aroused the mother’s heart within her breast, and it ached with a bitter yearning.