“Yes, I went,” he answered slowly; then he looked at her gravely, and said: “You are a stranger, Mrs. Falconer, and there is something connected with my trip to London that I should not betray, perhaps, for the sake of my family.” “Whatever you tell me will be held sacred,” she said, almost inaudibly, and the dark eyes looked at her in a sort of wonder. “I ought not to betray this to any one but a dear friend,” he said hesitatingly. “Mrs. Falconer, I wonder if you could like me well enough to be my friend? It would be very pleasant to me. You look so much like her that I should find comfort in your friendship.” Many and many a time Pansy Laurens had said to herself that Norman Wylde was the greatest enemy she had on earth. But now she held out her hand to him, in its soft silken glove, and he took it and pressed it eagerly. “I will be your friend,” she said, wondering if he was going to confess to her now about the secret marriage that was no marriage, after all. She was so curious to hear how he would justify that that she did not hesitate to promise him her friendship. But, to her wonder and indignation, he skipped quite over that important era in his love affair, and went on telling her about his trip to London: “Mrs. Falconer, that tour on which I prided myself was a plot, a trap, laid by my parents to get me away from Richmond and from Pansy. My client was a paid tool of my father’s, and his craft followed me to London, where, for almost a year, I remained, vainly seeking links in a case that never had existed, save in the fertile brain of those who invented that pretext for the purpose of luring me away from home and love. My brain whirls yet when I recall how I was duped and deceived, my life and hers made pitiable wrecks for the sake of a despicable pride of birth and position.” His agitation was terrible for the moment. His dark eyes blazed, great drops of perspiration started out on his pallid brow. As for her, she could not speak; she sat staring at him with parted lips and blue eyes full of misery. “Oh, I ought not to have gone back to that time, for it stirs the smoldering ashes into fire again,” he cried bitterly. “Think, Mrs. Falconer, how I suffered all that time, never hearing a word from my darling, although I wrote to her every week, and she had promised to write to me. And, at last--oh, Heaven!--there came to me a Richmond paper, saying that she had drowned herself.” “Oh!” sighed Pansy sympathetically, but he did not seem to hear her. His head drooped, and his eyes sought the ground. He seemed to be oblivious to all but his own pain. For her, she was thinking bitterly: “I am glad he is capable of some remorse for his sin. It makes me think a little more kindly of him.”