Colonel Falconer began to grow angry at Juliette’s foolishness, as he
called it to himself. Drawing back from her, he said stiffly:
“If you cannot live in the same house with my wife, Juliette, you are
quite at liberty to seek a boarding house anywhere you choose, and I
will pay your board and furnish you pin money.”
Juliette sprang upright in a perfect fury, shrieking out:
“You are planning to get rid of me already!”
Before the poor, badgered man could reply, Pansy came gliding forward,
and said sweetly:
“Perhaps Miss Ives would prefer for us to go away, and leave her in
possession of the house. If so, I am perfectly willing to do so, as I
fear we shall not get on together, judging from what I have already
seen of her disposition toward me.”
She hoped that Juliette would take her at her word, and that by this
means she would be enabled to leave this once dear, now dreaded, city.
She was frightened, too, at Juliette’s recognition of her, and foresaw
trouble if she remained.
But Juliette was startled at her uncle’s proposition, and she began
to come to her senses. She remembered that but for his liberality she
must be a beggar, and she dared not try him too far. Summoning a false,
sweet smile to her lips, she turned to him, and exclaimed:
“Dear uncle, forgive me. I fear I have been acting very foolishly. Of
course, I do not want to go away from the only relative I have in the
world, now that poor mamma is dead. I love you too well to leave you,
or to drive you from me. And, indeed, I was preparing to welcome my new
aunt with affection, when her striking likeness so startled me that I
behaved ridiculously, I fear, on the impulse of the moment. You will
excuse me, Mrs. Falconer, will you not?” turning to Pansy and holding
out a hand sparkling with costly gems.
Pansy clasped the offered hand with one as cold as ice, even through
its tiny gray kid glove, as she replied:
“Certainly, Miss Ives, for I am anxious to be your friend, if you will
let me.”
“Oh, thank you! I shall only be too glad, for I had feared that a
beautiful young wife would prejudice my uncle against me, and I am
glad to find that it is not so,” exclaimed Juliette, with pretended
cordiality. Rising to her feet, she continued: “Excuse me one moment,
while I see if your rooms are in readiness.”
She ran hastily to her own apartment, where she secured a framed
photograph of Norman Wylde, which she placed conspicuously on the
mantel of Pansy’s room.
“I believe she is Pansy Laurens, and I shall prepare many a severe test
for her,” she muttered angrily, as she returned to the parlor and told
Pansy, with a show of friendliness, that her rooms were in readiness,
and she was ready to show them to her.
They walked side by side through the broad hall, with its Turkish
carpet, statuary in niches, and stands of blooming flowers, up the
broad stairway to a suite of beautiful rooms in cream and scarlet.
“I hope you will like these rooms. Mamma had them furnished over but
a few months ago. Mine are like these, only in blue,” said Juliette,
with a patronizing air that at once aroused a teasing mood in Pansy,
and she exclaimed:
“Then I ought to have had your rooms instead of these, for blue is my
color, too!”
She saw a frown contract Juliette’s eyebrows, but she took no notice,
and walked over to the mantel, where the first thing she saw was the
handsome face of Norman Wylde smiling on her from an easel frame. It
gave her a start, but she had nerved herself to meet even the original
in this house, and now she merely lifted her arm to take up a piece of
bric-a-brac and examine it more closely, when the hanging sleeve of her
light gray wrap caught the top of the small easel, and it was instantly
hurled to the floor.
“Oh, what have I broken?” she cried, in pretended dismay. And Juliette
came forward to gather up the fragments.
“The easel is broken, but the photograph is unhurt. See,” she said,
holding it up before Pansy’s eyes and watching her closely; but Pansy
glanced at it with the careless interest of a stranger.
“What a handsome young man!” she said. “Is he one of your admirers,
Miss Ives?”
“I was once engaged to him,” Juliette answered. “I will take it away,”
she added, hurrying out of the room to conceal her chagrin at the
failure of her first test.
She could not decide whether the accident had been a real one or not.
Pansy had carried it out with such perfect ease that she began to
falter in her belief that this was Pansy Laurens.
“I may possibly be mistaken, but the likeness is so startling that I
shall test her in every way,” she decided.
The next morning Pansy appeared at their late breakfast in such an
exquisite and becoming morning gown that Juliette could not repress her
admiration, in spite of the anger with which she saw her uncle’s wife
take her place in front of the coffee urn.
“I thought you would be too tired to pour coffee this first morning,”
she said, almost angrily.
“Oh, no, indeed. I feel quite well, thank you,” was the bright reply,
and, as her white hands fluttered like birds over the china and silver,
she continued: “Colonel Falconer, I hope you are going to take me for
a long drive to-day so that I may see some of the beauties of your
historic Richmond.”
“Just what I was thinking of, my love,” said her husband. “You will
join us, will you not, Juliette?”
“Gladly,” she replied, thinking that she would thereby have another
opportunity of testing Pansy’s identity.
After breakfast Pansy invited her to come upstairs, where her maid was
unpacking her trunks, saying that she had brought her some presents
from London.
“Of course, as I had never seen you, I could not have decided what
would be most becoming to you had not my husband assisted me with a
description of your style and tastes,” she said. And when Juliette saw
the beautiful gifts that had been chosen for her she could not help
being pleased, both with the taste and generosity displayed by Pansy,
whom she thanked quite prettily, saying:
“I did you an injustice, feeling jealous of uncle’s love for you, when
all the time you were planning these pleasant surprises for me.”
Pansy hardly knew whether to trust these sweet protestations or not.
She would have liked to be at peace with Juliette Ives, but she could
not help distrusting her, and she resolved to watch her closely before
she quite discarded her distrust.
Juliette lay lazily back in a great crimson chair and watched Phebe,
the maid, unpacking Pansy’s beautiful clothes. She was obliged to own
that she had never seen such a magnificent trousseau as that with which
Colonel Falconer had provided his lovely bride.
“You are a woman to be envied, Mrs. Falconer,” she said; and Pansy
sighed faintly, although Juliette could not have told whether the sigh
meant supreme content or some hidden sorrow.
“She does not look as if she had always been really happy. There are
pensive curves about her lips when she is not smiling, and now and then
her eyes look anxious,” the girl decided.
In the afternoon an elegant open barouche took the three out riding,
and Colonel Falconer felt very proud of his beautiful wife and almost
equally beautiful niece, in their carriage costumes.
It was a lovely May day, and the city presented its best appearance
under a blue, smiling sky, which every Virginian believed as fair as
that of Italy. They rode out upon the popular Grove Road, then the
most fashionable drive in the city, and to that beautiful place, the
New Reservoir, with its bright waters glittering in the sun. Pansy
exclaimed with delight at the miniature lake, with the water lilies
fringing the green banks, and the little boats rocking on its breast.
Then the beautiful cemetery of Hollywood, with its magnificent monument
to the Confederate dead, was the next point of interest. Colonel
Falconer then gave the command to drive through the principal parks and
streets.
“Do not forget Seventh Street,” Juliette whispered to the driver, and
when they were rolling along before an immense structure on that street
she said: “That building, Mrs. Falconer, is the great tobacco factory
of Arnell & Grey. They employ an immense number of girls and women to
work for them--twelve hundred at least, I am told. Would you not like
to go through the factory? I presume it would furnish some interesting
sights to one unfamiliar with our Southern institutions.”
“I dare say it would, but unfortunately the smell of tobacco always
makes me very ill. Colonel Falconer, cannot we drive faster, so as to
escape this unpleasant odor?” exclaimed Pansy. He saw that her face had
certainly grown very pale, while her eyes were half closed. He directed
the driver to hasten out of the neighborhood.
“I am sorry it sickened you, but the odor was strong,” said Juliette.
“I do not know how those poor girls endure it. Their very clothing must
be impregnated with the disagreeable odor. But perhaps they do not mind
it like you and I, Mrs. Falconer--useless, fine ladies that we are.”
Mrs. Falconer’s blue eyes flashed, and the color rushed back into her
pale cheeks. She answered, with a flash of girlish spirit:
“You and I, Miss Ives, are made of the same clay as those factory
girls. We are more fortunate, that is all.”
“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.”