“She will, if she is really Pansy Laurens, hate him more if she believes that the child is some other woman’s,” she thought shrewdly, and smiled when she saw the signs of trouble that Pansy could not wholly disguise on her fair face. Poor Pansy! Her heart was well-nigh breaking, and when she reached home she feigned a headache, that she might have an excuse for shutting herself up in her own room to think over the events of to-day, which had aroused suspicions never to be laid again until they were either confirmed or proved baseless. The dark eyes of the little child had aroused the mother’s heart within her breast, and it ached with a bitter yearning. “Oh, if my baby did not die, they were cruel and wicked to deceive me, to cheat me out of its love all these years! But only let me find out if that child is mine, and I will have it--I will!” she sobbed wildly, in a mood of passionate recklessness. But suddenly she heard her husband’s voice in the hall, and shivered. “Oh, what am I talking of? How dare I claim my child in the face of everything that is against me?” she moaned bitterly; and just then Colonel Falconer entered, with a face full of anxiety. “They told me you had a headache. Can I do anything for you, my darling?” he asked tenderly. “Only love me and pity me,” the girl answered, almost despairingly, out of her hidden sorrow. He was alarmed at her tone, and feared she was suffering greatly. “Let me send for a physician,” he urged. “No, no, I do not need medicine--only rest and quiet,” she pleaded, with a feeling of remorse in her heart that she could not love him better--he was so good and true. But since she had come back to Richmond, she was conscious that there was less chance than ever for her to love her husband in the ardent fashion to which he had the best claim. Her affection for him was so calm, so friendly, only, while, to her dismay, all her old madness had returned at the first sight of Norman Wylde’s handsome face. “Oh what a tyrant love is!” she sighed bitterly. “I thought I hated him--I know I ought to hate him--yet his face haunts me as it did in those old days when I loved him first. I dream of him by night, and I think of him by day, in spite of every endeavor to forget him. Heaven help me, for I am wretched!” Days passed, and Pansy found some relief from the haunting image of Norman Wylde in thinking of the little child that she firmly believed to be her own. She struck up a great intimacy with the Wyldes in hopes of seeing the little one more frequently; but she was disappointed. Apparently the housekeeper had received strict orders, for Pet’s black eyes were no longer to be seen laughing around the drawing-room door, nor his footsteps heard pattering through the halls. There was a sunny plot of grass in the back yard where he played all day now, except when he was in that part of the house allotted to the housekeeper.