“You make me quite curious. I think unfortunate love affairs are so sad and romantic. Was yours unfortunate, Mr. Wylde?” asked Pansy, still leading him on. “It was tragic,” he answered gloomily; and she was glad when she saw he was suffering some remorse for the ill that he had wrought. Her heart began to grow softer toward him. “He is sorry for his sin. Perhaps he would undo it if he could,” whispered her heart. Norman Wylde lifted his sad, dark eyes and looked at her gravely. Oh, how strong was the resemblance to his lost love, and how strangely his heart thrilled at the sound of her voice! No one but Pansy Laurens had ever made his heart beat faster by a voice of music. “I wish you would tell me all about it,” she said persuasively. CHAPTER XXV. AN OLD STORY. Pansy had quite forgotten why she came to the Capitol Square. She could think of nothing but Norman Wylde and the sorrow on his handsome face. She lingered beside him until he consented to tell her the story of his unhappy love affair. “I was engaged to Juliette Ives, but I was not very much in love with her. I met, in the country, a beautiful young girl named Pansy Laurens,” he said. “The young lady was not in our set. She was poor, and worked at Arnell & Grey’s tobacco factory; but she was the fairest, sweetest, most charming little creature I ever met. We fell in love at first sight, and I broke my engagement with Juliette for her sake. But, of course, you think, as every one else did, Mrs. Falconer, that I acted badly.” He stopped and looked searchingly into her pale face. Oh, how like it was to his lost love’s, only with a proud smile on it that made it a little different from Pansy’s, that had been so sweet and gentle. “I am very much interested; please go on,” she murmured. And, sighing heavily, Norman Wylde continued: “Of course, everybody set themselves against us, Pansy’s relations as well as mine.” Pansy trembled, for the deep, sweet, thrilling voice went to her heart, which began to beat heavily and painfully. How her thoughts went back to the past, when he had been her worshiped lover, and she had thought him true! “We met in secret, my sweet little love and I,” continued Norman, “but we could not see each other very often, because she had to work in the factory all the week. But on Sundays I saw her at church, and in the afternoons she would come here, or to Libby Hill Park, always to a different place, that no one might suspect us. I would have married her at once, but we should have had nothing to live on, as I had no clients yet, and my father had threatened to disinherit me if I did not give her up. But I vowed in secret that I would not do that, and, at last, fate--as I thought--opened out a way for us to be happy. I found a client who wished me to go to Europe and manage an important case.” “And you went?” she asked, for he paused so long that she feared his confidences were at an end.