“Poor, deluded fool that I was!” she sighed, thinking how much sadder and wiser she had grown since then, for now she was past twenty, although she looked so fair and girlish no one would have thought she was more than sixteen. They left San Diego directly, and went abroad. They spent a year in travel, and in that time Pansy learned much and improved much. The clouds passed from her beautiful face, and she was tranquilly happy with her husband, save when one blighting memory intervened. It was the thought of Norman Wylde and the dark episode in her life that she had concealed from Colonel Falconer. “He believes me pure and good; he has the greatest confidence in my goodness; yet all the while I am hiding from him a dark secret which I dare not disclose. Heaven grant he may never find out the truth, for it would be so hard for me to convince him that I was innocent, although so foully wronged,” she thought often, when the unfailing kindness of her husband touched her with ardent admiration for his noble nature and awakened self-reproach within her sensitive mind. CHAPTER XV. STARTLING NEWS. Colonel Falconer had written, quite six months before, to his relatives, apprising them of his marriage to a beautiful young girl in California, but apparently they did not have any congratulations to offer him, or they were deeply offended, for no reply came to his letter. “I am glad that they can afford to be so independent,” he thought, with pique and contempt commingled. He felt quite sure that they were indignant at the marriage that deprived his niece of her anticipations of being his heiress, and he resented the way in which they had treated him. “Not even to wish me joy, after all the kindness they have received from me,” he said bitterly; and, dismissing them from his thoughts, he gave all his attention to his lovely young bride, who was so grateful for his love, and who seemed to return it in a shy, gentle fashion that was very pleasing. They had not given a thought to returning home yet, when one morning he found in his morning’s mail an American letter, broadly edged with black. He turned pale as he caught it up, exclaiming: “Juliette’s handwriting! My sister must be dead!” And, tearing it open, he ran his eyes hastily over the black-edged sheet. Pansy watched him with startled eyes. That name Juliette had touched an unpleasant chord in her memory. Colonel Falconer heaved a long sigh, and placed the letter in her hands. Pansy, womanlike, read the name at the end first. It was traced in ornate characters, but it stung her like a serpent’s fang: Your unhappy niece, JULIETTE IVES. She glanced at the top of the sheet, and read: RICHMOND, Virginia. Colonel Falconer had walked to the window of their pretty breakfast room, and was looking out--perhaps to hide a moisture in his eyes.