With a pitiful attempt at gayety, she faltered: “You must learn not to be frightened at a woman’s fainting. It means nothing but temporary weakness.” “Are you sure of that?” he asked. “Because----” Then he paused. “What?” she questioned. “I feared you had read something in that paper that grieved or frightened you,” he answered, remembering at the same time that when she had that illness in California Mrs. Scruggs had asserted that something she had read in a paper was the primary cause. But Pansy denied that anything in the paper had affected her in the least. “How could it be so, when I had never been in Richmond, and knew no one there?” she said. “Besides, I had but just taken the paper and had read nothing but your sister’s death, when suddenly I felt my strength leaving me, and I fell. Tell him, Phebe,” she said, looking at her maid, “that it is a very common occurrence for ladies to faint.” Phebe asserted that all fashionable ladies were given to fainting, and his own experience bore him out in the fact. The only difference was that he had never regarded Pansy in the light of a society lady. She was a beautiful, natural child of nature, he had been proud to think. She insisted on getting up to dress and to drive in the park. “I want fresh air,” she said; and, looking at her pale cheeks and heavy eyes, he thought so, too. “Mind you don’t give me another such scare shortly,” he said, as he went out to order the carriage, for they had taken a pretty house in Park Lane for the season, and surrounded themselves with luxuries. They had been going into society some little, but neither cared much for it. He had seen enough of it to be blasé, and she was timid. When they were driving along he said abruptly: “I suppose we must make some plans for my poor niece. What do you say, darling? Shall we go home and take care of Juliette?” “Oh, must we go home? I am so happy here!” she cried. “But I shall be obliged to go back and settle up my sister’s affairs, Pansy.” “Couldn’t you leave me, and come back when you had fixed everything?” she inquired vaguely. “But--Juliette?” he objected. “Couldn’t you give her some money, and leave her there with--with some of her friends?” He looked in surprise at the girl who was usually so sweet and gentle. Her words sounded heartless. “How strangely you talk--as if you had taken a dislike to that poor orphan girl whom you have never even seen,” he said severely. “Oh, forgive me!” she cried, frightened at his displeasure. Nestling closer to his side, she murmured: “It is naughty of me, I know, but I can’t help feeling jealous of that girl you like so much. She will come between us. We will never be as happy again as we were in this past year.”