CHAPTER XXXIII.
NOBLE FORGIVENESS.
Colonel Falconer stood gazing like one petrified at his unconscious wife until suddenly his own face whitened to a marble pallor, an expression of keen agony convulsed his features, and, clasping both hands upon his breast, he sank backward into a chair, while a low moan of pain escaped his lips.
He had been seized with a spasm at the heart, a misfortune that had befallen him at various times in his life, but of which he had never spoken to Pansy, being very sensitive on the score of the heart disease, which was hereditary in the Falconer family, and of which his sister, Mrs. Ives, had died.
For a few moments he lay back in the chair, struggling with all his strength of mind against his misery; then, putting his hand into his breast pocket, he brought out a small vial, from whose contents he swallowed a few drops. The effect soon became apparent in a cessation of the terrible pain. Then a low, frightened cry from the bed made him look toward Pansy, and he found that she had revived and was staring at him with a glance of wonder and fear.
“Oh, what is it? Have I killed you?” she gasped faintly.
“It is nothing—a slight spasm of the heart, brought on by excitement. I am better now,” Colonel Falconer replied coldly, and just then the door opened and Mrs. Finley came nervously into the room.
“Mamma, this is Colonel Falconer,” Pansy half whispered, adding anxiously: “I have told you how good he has been to me, and I have told him who and what I am, but briefly. Now I want you to tell him the story of my willful girlhood, and the full extent of my sin.”
“Will you listen, sir?” asked the pale, gray-haired little woman timidly.
A dark frown came between his eyebrows, but he answered impatiently:
“Yes.”
And so, in the little room where Pansy lay, pale with pain and despair, the story of her girlhood was told to the husband she had deceived—told kindly and gently by her mother’s lips, yet without abating one jot of the truth.
“If she had taken her mother’s advice, sir, she would never have come to this pass. I told her that a rich young man like Mr. Wylde wouldn’t think of marrying a poor little factory girl, but she didn’t believe my warning. She wouldn’t heed me,” sighed poor Mrs. Finley, when she had told, in her pitiful little way, the story of Pansy’s willfulness and disobedience.
But she, poor thing, looked pleadingly at her pale, silent husband.
“But you see how it was, don’t you?” she cried imploringly. “I loved him so, and I fell under his fascinations so that I couldn’t help myself; and I thought mother would be so pleased when she found out I was his wife she would forgive all the rest. Ah, Heaven! I paid dearly, dearly for that disobedience!”
He sat silent, rigid, looking and listening without a word, and Pansy sobbed bitterly:
“Did I not say you would never forgive me? But I deserve it. I have not one word to say for myself, only this: You will keep my miserable secret, for when Norman Wylde charged me with my identity I denied it bitterly. Oh, he must never know the truth, and if I recover from my wound I will go away from here, Colonel Falconer, and never trouble your peace again.”
He smiled a sad, derisive smile at those words, as if in mockery of her promise, and then said:
“But I have not yet heard how you came by that wound.”
“My brother Willie swore that he would kill me for the disgrace that I had brought on the honest name of Laurens. When I came back home to see my sister he tried to carry out his threat. I do not blame him, nor must you, for my stepfather had goaded him to madness by his taunts and slurs. Poor boy! He is sorry now for his insane deed, and the world must never know.”
He smothered some angry words under his dark mustache, for Pansy was beginning to speak again in her soft, hopeless little voice:
“While I lay here waiting for Willie to bring you, I made some clever little plans. Juliette went with the Wyldes, did she not?”
“Of course.”
“Then you will telegraph her to-morrow that I have changed my mind, and will go North to some gay watering place, but that she will remain under the chaperonage of Mrs. Wylde. My presence in this house can be kept a dead secret until I get well enough to go away—into a convent, perhaps—into lasting exile, certainly. Do not grieve, mamma,” as a whimper of protest came from the little woman’s grieved heart. “You will have your other children, you know.” Then, looking back at her husband, went on plaintively: “In the meantime, you will have gone away, and by and by you will write back to your friends that poor little Pansy is dead and buried. You will come home to Juliette then, and—after a while—you will forget.”
The plaintive voice broke, and Colonel Falconer sat still for a few moments, lost in deep thought. Suddenly he spoke:
“You are very clever,” he said.
“I thought it all out for your sake. I was so anxious that no disgrace should touch you,” she answered humbly.
“Poor little one!” he muttered; then rose and laid his hand solemnly on her head. “Dear, you have been bitterly punished for your girlish fault,” he said gravely; then, in tones vibrating with tenderness, he added: “You are my beloved wife still. I forgive your deception, and I will never forsake you.”