Then Uncle Robbins had come to Richmond from his country home on a little business, and, struck by her pale cheeks and air of languor, invited her to go home with him. Mother urged her to accept the invitation, declaring that she could get along without her, and Pansy went gladly away on her little summer holiday, which was now drawing to an end. Her heart was full of this as she swung to and fro in the hammock beneath the trees, and listened to the wind rustling the leaves so musically, seeming to murmur over and over that name so dear to her heart: “Norman Wylde!” He was a summer boarder at her aunt’s, and he had been kind to her, not cool and supercilious like the others, who looked down upon her because she was a working girl. Pansy thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen, and she was grateful to him for the courteous way in which he treated her, never seeming to realize any difference in the social position of herself and Miss Ives, the Richmond belle, who was here with her mother because the doctors had tabooed any gayety for the elderly lady this summer on account of a serious heart trouble. Juliette Ives was as much in love with the handsome young gentleman as Pansy herself, and she sneered at the factory girl in her cheap lawns and ginghams. “Actually setting herself up as an equal among her aunt’s boarders,” she said disdainfully. “I mean to put her down at once, and let her know that we do not desire her company.” So she boldly asked Pansy if she could hire her to do the washing for her mother and herself. “I am not a servant,” Pansy answered, flushing angrily. “You are a factory girl, aren’t you?” disdainfully. “Yes, but not a servant.” “I don’t see much difference,” said the rich girl insolently; and from that moment the two were open enemies. Juliette Ives knew in her own heart that her spiteful actions had been the outcome of jealousy because Norman Wylde had looked so admiringly at Pansy when he first met her, and Pansy was quick enough to understand the truth. “She is in love with him, and is jealous of me, in spite of my poverty and my lonely position. Very well, I’ll pay her back for her scorn, if I can,” she resolved, with girlish pique. And as she possessed beauty equal to, if not greater than, Juliette’s blond charms, and was fairly well educated and intelligent, she had some advantages, at least, with which to enter the lists with the aristocratic belle who scorned her so openly. And Norman Wylde, who had a noble, chivalrous nature, could not help taking Pansy’s part when he saw how the boarders tried to put her down. “Poor little thing! It’s a shame, for she is as sweet and pretty as a wild rose, and they ought to be friendly with her and help to brighten her hard lot,” he thought, with indignation. CHAPTER II. LOVE ALL HIS OWN.