“Will you swear that this is not Pansy’s child?” Norman insisted hoarsely; but at that moment she succeeded in freeing her hand from his clasp and darted away like a startled deer. Not wishing to create a sensation, he had to refrain from following her. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BLACKMAILER BAFFLED. Mr. Finley had left Pansy and sought his home again in a tempest of fury and baffled cupidity, realizing fully that his scheme of blackmailing her would not succeed, and that he must look elsewhere for booty. Pansy’s dauntless bravery and defiance had certainly staggered his bold courage, and he began to fear that he was not going to receive such a windfall as he had expected from Pansy’s secret. Having a dangerous secret of his own, which would be sure to come to light if he proceeded openly against her, he found himself in a quandary. “The plucky little wretch! Who would have believed that she would openly defy me, and deny her identity? Why, she would have handed me over to that policeman in another moment if I hadn’t cut and run,” he exclaimed angrily, feeling that he would like to shake the little beauty for her bold defiance. He slept but little that night for thinking about her, and the next day he came to the conclusion that, of all those concerned in the drama in which he was so cleverly enacting the villain’s part, there was no chance of blackmailing any but Colonel Falconer. “He is rich and will pay liberally for the keeping of the secret I hold against his wife,” he decided, and then he set his cunning brain to work to devise a plan by which to approach Colonel Falconer on the delicate subject of his wife. Poor little Mrs. Finley, whom he had long ago reduced to the status of a trembling, obedient slave, looked at him in wonder as he lounged about the house, paying no attention to the grocery, for he had long ago placed Willie in his store as a clerk, and the youth was very reliable. She thought fearfully: “There is something brewing in his cunning mind. Has he found out that I have been seeing my poor little grandchild by stealth, and is he planning some punishment for me?” She trembled at the thought, for she knew that he was both cunning and vindictive. He ruled her and her children with a rod of iron. He had never forgotten or forgiven the assertion of his wife, that she would never have married him if she had known that he would not care for her children, and he made her and them suffer for it in various ways. One of his favorite methods was to taunt them with the disgrace that Pansy had brought upon them, and another was to keep alive in Willie’s breast the fierce resentment and murderous wrath that had taken hold of him when he first learned that his beautiful sister had gone astray.