CHAPTER XIII.
IN A BOARDING HOUSE.
Perhaps it was the brooding over the past and the pain and remorse that wore upon Pansy until she fell ill and had that long fever, although some of the little household declared that it was something she had read in a Southern paper.
When Colonel Falconer, who had grown uneasy because his last letter to Pansy was not answered, came suddenly back to San Diego, he found that the girl had been ill of a brain fever for several weeks.
The mistress of the boarding house, who had been very kind to the sick girl, explained everything as well as she could:
“She had been looking droopy an’ peaked some time, an’ her appetite no better than a baby’s, when she kem inter the parlor one Sunday after church, an’ set down to read. All at once she screamed out, an’ fell in a faint. She had this paper in her hand, an’ I’ll allus believe she read something in it that was bad news to her. But I’ve read it through an’ through, and I can’t guess what ’tis. Maybe you kin.”
She put the newspaper in his hand—one almost two months old. It was a daily paper, published at Richmond, Virginia.
“I do not think anything in this could have affected her. She was from Kentucky. Where did she get this?” he asked.
“Some transient boarder must have left it, I think. It had been laying around on the parlor table several days when she picked it up.”
He went over the paper carefully—the deaths, the marriages—but he saw nothing about any one by the name of Wilcox. There was a society column, and he went over that, too, although he did not expect to find anything relating to her, for she had been very careful to impress upon his mind, with a sort of proud humility, that she belonged to the humble walks of life.
“Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“You’ve found it?” exclaimed Mrs. Scruggs.
“Oh, no, nothing relating to her,” he answered quickly.
The paragraph that had surprised him was this:
Norman Wylde has returned from his long sojourn abroad, and his much-talked-of marriage to the beautiful Miss Ives will take place very soon.
Major Falconer knew both parties very well, but he had never spoken of them to Pansy. He forgot both almost immediately in his anxiety over the sick girl.
“Mrs. Scruggs, I wonder if I might see her? I am a very old friend,” he said.
“She is sitting up a little while to-day. I know she would be glad to see you,” was the answer, and she immediately conducted him to Pansy’s room.
The sick girl was so surprised that she uttered a cry of joy. Her blue eyes lighted with pleasure.
“Oh, I am so glad!” she exclaimed impulsively.
Mrs. Scruggs went quietly out. He knelt down by her side and kissed her little hands with the ardor of a younger lover.
Yes, all his prudent resolves had melted before his joy at seeing her again, and his pity for her suffering. Gently, so as not to startle her from him, he told her of his love, and begged her to be his wife.
“I am old enough to be your father, I know; but my heart is young, and, then, I could take such good care of you, my darling,” he said.
“Oh, you are too good to me, and I—I could not love you enough,” she faltered.
“I would teach you to love me,” he answered. And she had such a deep regard for him that it seemed to her that it would be very easy to learn that lesson.