San Diego had a sensation when Colonel Falconer, the rich Southerner,
married the beautiful young typewriter within a few days after his
return from San Francisco.
He had pleaded for an early marriage, and she, after some hesitancy,
had consented.
“There is no one whose consent I have to ask, I suppose?” he said; and,
after a moment’s silence, she answered:
“No, there is no one. I have reason to think that my mother believes me
dead. I have no wish to undeceive her.”
“But does not that seem cruel?” he asked, and tears started to her eyes
as she answered bitterly:
“She has her new husband and other children to comfort her for my loss.”
He said no more on the subject, and preparations were made for a speedy
marriage. He declared that that would be best, and Pansy could not
gainsay the assertion. Her small stock of money had been exhausted
during her illness, and she was still too weak to go back to work.
So when her lover declared that they would be married quietly this
week, and go at once upon a wedding tour abroad, she did not make any
objection to the plan. She was glad to have her way smoothed out before
her by his kindly, generous hand.
“Oh, how good he is to me--how noble! I wish that I could love him more
in return for all his goodness,” she thought, sadly contrasting her
gentle, quiet affection for this good man with the passionate love she
had felt for one less worthy.
“Perhaps even now he is the husband of haughty Juliette Ives,” she
thought, and grew cold and pale at the fancy.
She believed that she hated Norman Wylde, and she trusted that she
might never meet him on earth again. To Colonel Falconer she gave the
utmost respect, and a placid, gentle affection utterly unlike that
ardent passion which she had outlived and outworn, as she believed, in
her heart.
She thought it a little strange that he never mentioned any of his
relatives, and, the day before they were married, she said:
“Are you sure that none of your grand relatives will object to your
marrying a poor little typewriter girl?”
To her surprise, he started and looked visibly embarrassed.
“Ah, I made a clever guess!” she exclaimed, with faint sarcasm, and
then he recovered himself.
“No--yes,” he stammered, and then added: “I have no near relatives,
Pansy, except a widowed sister. She has one child--a beautiful
daughter, who has counted confidently on being my heiress. I think they
both will feel disappointed at hearing of my marriage, but they have no
right to do so. My sister has a neat little fortune of her own, and her
daughter is soon to marry a rich man.”
“Then you have not written to ask their consent?” Pansy asked, with
unconscious bitterness, feeling an unaccountable antagonism to those
two unknown ones.
“Certainly not,” Colonel Falconer answered, with some surprise, and
continued: “I’m ashamed to confess that I don’t pretend to keep up any
correspondence with my sister. I have written her once since I came to
San Diego. She has not answered yet, so I shall not take the trouble to
announce my marriage to her until we are safe on the other side of the
Atlantic. She will be glad for such bad news to be delayed,” laughing
grimly.
Afterward it seemed strange to her that she had never thought of asking
the names of these people, who would soon be related to her so closely
by her marriage with Colonel Falconer. And it seemed equally strange
that he did not tell her without the asking. There was a fate in it,
she told herself, when she came to know, for if she had heard those two
names she would never have married Colonel Falconer, and run the risk
of again meeting Norman Wylde.
The next day they were married quietly at church, but there were quite
a number of people present, for the affair had become known through the
gossip of the delighted Mrs. Scruggs. Pansy remembered with a bitter
thrill that ceremony in Washington, which had made her so blindly
happy.
“Poor, deluded fool that I was!” she sighed, thinking how much sadder
and wiser she had grown since then, for now she was past twenty,
although she looked so fair and girlish no one would have thought she
was more than sixteen.
They left San Diego directly, and went abroad. They spent a year in
travel, and in that time Pansy learned much and improved much. The
clouds passed from her beautiful face, and she was tranquilly happy
with her husband, save when one blighting memory intervened. It was the
thought of Norman Wylde and the dark episode in her life that she had
concealed from Colonel Falconer.
“He believes me pure and good; he has the greatest confidence in my
goodness; yet all the while I am hiding from him a dark secret which I
dare not disclose. Heaven grant he may never find out the truth, for it
would be so hard for me to convince him that I was innocent, although
so foully wronged,” she thought often, when the unfailing kindness of
her husband touched her with ardent admiration for his noble nature and
awakened self-reproach within her sensitive mind.