“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?”