“I have had an accident, Colonel Falconer. I have been shot in the shoulder.” He recoiled with a cry of dismay, and she continued, in a low but distinct voice: “Stay here by me, and--I--will--tell you all--about it. I am not going to die, they say, although it--might--be--better if I were.” “Pansy, you must be raving! You do not mean that,” he exclaimed, in alarm, and with such a tender look that she exclaimed remorsefully: “Ah, how good you are to me! But I do not deserve it, for I have deceived you shamefully, and when I have confessed my sin you will--cast me off--you will never--speak--to--poor--Pansy again!” “Now I am quite sure that you are raving. You have done nothing, my precious wife, for which I could visit you with such harsh punishment as that,” exclaimed her husband fondly, as he bent over her and smoothed back with loving hands the curling locks that strayed over her blue-veined brow. A heavy sigh drifted over the lips that were pale with pain, and Pansy murmured sadly: “I am not raving. Although I am in great pain from the wound in my shoulder, I know quite well what I am saying. I have deceived you, my kind, noble husband, and when you know all you will hate me.” “Nonsense!” he replied cheerily, and, clasping her cold little hand warmly and closely in his, he murmured reassuringly: “Come, let us have that dreadful confession, my pet, that your foolish alarms may be speedily dissipated.” But no answering smile met his. Pansy was as pale as death as she began: “Louisville was not my--native place--as I told you. I--I--was born--in Richmond--and I am at this moment--under my mother’s roof.” Colonel Falconer started violently, but he still kept fast hold of her little hand as she continued: “That is not all. I--I--had run away from my home when I met Mrs. Beach. There--there--was a stain--upon my name--although,” passionately, “I swear to you it was not my fault! I am--Heaven pity me!--that girl whom Juliette Ives hates so relentlessly because she caused the breaking of her engagement with Norman Wylde.” “Pansy Laurens!” Colonel Falconer uttered, in a voice of horror; and he dropped her hand and started back. She made no reply. Her confession had exhausted her strength, and she had fainted. CHAPTER XXXIII. NOBLE FORGIVENESS. Colonel Falconer stood gazing like one petrified at his unconscious wife until suddenly his own face whitened to a marble pallor, an expression of keen agony convulsed his features, and, clasping both hands upon his breast, he sank backward into a chair, while a low moan of pain escaped his lips. He had been seized with a spasm at the heart, a misfortune that had befallen him at various times in his life, but of which he had never spoken to Pansy, being very sensitive on the score of the heart disease, which was hereditary in the Falconer family, and of which his sister, Mrs. Ives, had died.