He tried to comfort her, as if she had been a little child, and at last she sobbed herself to sleep in his arms, and he held her thus for more than an hour, gazing on the sweet, sad little face with eyes full of love and pity. “Poor little darling, how bitterly and undeservedly you have suffered,” he thought, adding bitterly: “Curses on the false-hearted villain that betrayed her innocent youth! I hope I may never meet him again, for if I did I fear I should take vengeance into my own hands.” The next morning, when the colonel’s valet brought in the mail, it consisted of nothing but the New York papers. He had finished breakfast, and took them out on the porch to read. Pansy followed him, and sat down in her little rocking-chair to enjoy the beautiful mountain scenery that lay outspread like a succession of pictures before her eyes. Colonel Falconer selected his favorite paper, lighted his morning cigar, and disposed himself comfortably to read. And none seeing the quiet, homelike picture, the handsome man, and the lovely woman, seeming so calmly happy in their domestic life, would have dreamed that a heavy storm cloud surcharged with woe was about to burst in fury upon their heads. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE STORM BREAKS. Colonel Falconer opened his fresh paper, and the first thing that caught his eyes were these words, in staring headlines: A VIRGINIA TRAGEDY, INVOLVING SOME OF THE F. F. V.’S WITH THE WORKING CLASSES, AND BEING THE CLIMAX TO A ROMANCE OF LOVE AND SORROW EQUAL TO ANY EVER EVOLVED FROM THE BRAIN OF A NOVELIST. He uttered an exclamation of interest, and Pansy looked around. “What is it, dear?” she asked languidly. “Nothing--that is---- Well, you shall have the paper presently,” he answered, and read on: Something more than three years ago there was a ripple of excitement in the fashionable society of Richmond over the fact that an engagement of marriage between two prominent people had been dissolved, owing to a sudden infatuation on the young man’s part for a beautiful, charming young girl, an employee at Arnell & Grey’s tobacco factory. The girl, though of poor parentage, and compelled to labor for her own support, was said to be wonderfully lovely, fairly well educated, and of so fair a character that it had never been sullied by a breath of scandal. But parents on either side proved unkind. The young man was forbidden to marry the little beauty, and she on her part had stern orders from a widowed mother never to hold any communication with her lover.