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.”