“Mrs. Falconer, that tour on which I prided myself was a plot, a trap, laid by my parents to get me away from Richmond and from Pansy. My client was a paid tool of my father’s, and his craft followed me to London, where, for almost a year, I remained, vainly seeking links in a case that never had existed, save in the fertile brain of those who invented that pretext for the purpose of luring me away from home and love. My brain whirls yet when I recall how I was duped and deceived, my life and hers made pitiable wrecks for the sake of a despicable pride of birth and position.”
His agitation was terrible for the moment. His dark eyes blazed, great drops of perspiration started out on his pallid brow. As for her, she could not speak; she sat staring at him with parted lips and blue eyes full of misery.
“Oh, I ought not to have gone back to that time, for it stirs the smoldering ashes into fire again,” he cried bitterly. “Think, Mrs. Falconer, how I suffered all that time, never hearing a word from my darling, although I wrote to her every week, and she had promised to write to me. And, at last—oh, Heaven!—there came to me a Richmond paper, saying that she had drowned herself.”
“Oh!” sighed Pansy sympathetically, but he did not seem to hear her. His head drooped, and his eyes sought the ground. He seemed to be oblivious to all but his own pain.
For her, she was thinking bitterly:
“I am glad he is capable of some remorse for his sin. It makes me think a little more kindly of him.”
Then she shuddered at herself, for she knew that she was thinking of him more than kindly—fast falling under the old glamour—and she knew this must not be, that she ought to fly as from the tempting of a serpent. She made a motion to rise, but he looked up quickly.
“Do not go—yet,” he said pleadingly. “Somehow, it is a sad pleasure to me to see you sitting there, with that face so like poor dead Pansy’s that it brings back all the perished past.”
At those words she could not rise. She seemed to have no volition of her own. She sat still, comparing herself to a bird charmed by a serpent.
“Do you know,” he went on, “we sat here on the very bench one Sunday, just a week before I sailed for England. She wore a white dress and wide straw hat, something like you wear now. I told her of my good fortune, but, poor child, a presentiment seemed to come over her gentle spirit, and she wept most bitterly because I was going away.”