There was not a day in which she did not thank Heaven for providing such a safe haven for her when she had fled, frightened and despairing, from her old home; not a day in which she did not pray for the dear ones she had left behind. Most bitterly she repented the willfulness that had led to all her sorrow. “Had I only minded my mother, no harm would have come to me,” she sighed over and over. Suddenly over the calm, peaceful life they were leading in the little cottage home fell a dark shadow. Mrs. Beach had been failing for some time, and at last it became only too evident to Pansy and the few friends they had made in San Diego that her days were numbered. The invalid herself was not ignorant of the fact, for after an interview with her physician one day she sent for Pansy and gently broke the sad tidings that she had, in all probability, but a few weeks to live. “Do not grieve, my dear. You know I have been prepared for this some time,” she said, with sweet resignation. “It only remains now for me to make my arrangements for the end.” Pansy’s irrepressible sobs drowned her voice for a while, but when the agitated girl had grown calmer she continued: “I have telegraphed for my husband’s cousin, who will inherit the fortune whose income I am using, to come at once to San Diego; and he will attend to all the final arrangements. I will be buried here, as my husband was lost at sea many years ago, and it matters not to me where my ashes repose, as they can never rest beside his. I wish, my dear girl, that I had a fortune to leave you, more especially as the man who will inherit mine does not need it, being already very wealthy. But my husband’s wealth, as I never bore him any children, reverts by his will to his own family.” CHAPTER XII. BEGINNING OVER AGAIN. Colonel Falconer, the man whose coming was so anxiously expected by Mrs. Beach, arrived in ten days at San Diego; but the invalid had died just a few hours before his arrival. Poor Pansy was once more alone in the world, for Colonel Falconer, though full of pity and sympathy for the friendless girl, could not be to her such a friend as he wished. He was fifty years old, and a bachelor, therefore if he had offered to divide with her the fortune that had come to him by Mrs. Beach’s death the world would have caviled. He was a typical Virginian, generous and true-hearted, and he grieved that such should be the case, for he would willingly have made ample provision for the support of the lovely, penniless girl who had been so dear to his deceased relative. “It is a deuced shame that my hands are tied in this way. I feel mean, taking all that money and seeing that beautiful little creature go out to earn her own living,” he said to himself the day after the funeral, when Pansy had come to him to tell him, with a pale, sad little face, that she had been so fortunate as to be offered a place in a real-estate office as a typewriter.