When Colonel Falconer, out of the generosity of his great heart, forgave his unhappy wife the deception she had practiced upon him, he made up his mind that he would take her away from the fatal city of her birth, never to return.
They would go abroad, and begin a new life, in which they would be all in all to each other; and he would try to forget the dark shadow that lay on his wife’s past, and make her happy as she had seemed before they came back to Richmond and the tragedy of her buried sin rose to overwhelm her again with its ignominy.
He made arrangements for keeping Pansy’s presence in her mother’s house a secret from the world. Phebe was told only such facts as were strictly necessary, and then installed as the faithful nurse of her mistress.
Colonel Falconer himself came in disguise to visit her; and Doctor Hewitt, who was the only one outside the house who was in the secret of Pansy’s continued existence, never dreamed that the invalid was the wife of one of the grandest, noblest men in the city, and mistress of a palatial home on Franklin Street. He pitied her very much, and advised her one day to remain with her mother and begin a new life.
Pansy wept bitterly, but made no reply, and he went away feeling very sad over her probable future, for both she and Alice were so much better now that there was no occasion for his further visits. He would see the beautiful erring girl no more, and he feared that, with the return of health and strength, she would drift back to her old sinful life.
In the meantime, Colonel Falconer busied himself generously in trying to brighten the lives of Pansy’s relatives.
In the first place, he had to bribe that wretch, Finley, to silence on the fact that Pansy Laurens was still living. He accepted gladly enough a much smaller sum than he had demanded from Pansy, fearing that if he demurred he might not get anything.
Colonel Falconer, with his keen insight into human nature, soon saw that Pansy’s mother was unhappy and ill-treated—a mere slave to her sullen, brutal husband. He proposed to Pansy to settle a sum of money on her mother that should be strictly her own, and the income from which would enable her to lead a life of ease, independent of her miserly husband.
“How shall I ever repay all your goodness?” Pansy cried, when he told her that he had settled twenty-five thousand dollars on her mother, and that Alice and Nora were to be sent to Staunton to boarding school. His kind intentions toward Willie were all frustrated, for the young man, ashamed and remorseful over what he had done, and standing in great awe of his aristocratic brother-in-law, had abruptly left home the same night on which he had wounded Pansy, and as yet no tidings had been received from him.
The time came when Pansy was to leave home and mother for the second time, and it was, indeed, a sad parting; yet not as bitter as the first, for then Pansy was going alone into exile, but now there was a strong arm and a brave heart between her and the world.
“Only love me, my poor little darling,” he had answered, gently and gravely, in reply to her expressions of gratitude, and she had promised that she would, while, at the same time, she contrasted his noble soul with that of Norman Wylde.
“One so noble and high-minded, the other so false and cruel! Oh, Heaven help me to tear his image from my weak womanly heart, and enshrine there this good and noble husband!” she prayed passionately.