Left to himself and to the remorseful pleadings of his mother, the young man might have got over some of his anger, more especially as poor Pansy had atoned for her fault with her life. There were times when the remembrance of her message to him, her pitiful promise that she would never disgrace him again, stung keenly, and forced him to accuse himself of being accessory to her death; but these moods never lasted long, for whenever Mr. Finley found these kinder impulses taking root in the youth’s mind he would dispel them by maliciously hinting that, in all probability, Pansy was yet alive, and might turn up at any time to recall to the world the scandal that had trailed its slime over the name of Laurens. “Pretty Kate North would not smile so sweetly then when she saw you waiting at the church door on Sundays,” he suggested, with a leer that brought the hot color to Willie’s cheeks, for this, his first real love affair, was a very tender point with him, and he had often wondered to himself if pretty little Kate North, with her black eyes and dimpled red cheeks, thought any the less of him because of the family disgrace. His love for Kate made him all the more bitter in his thoughts toward Pansy. “How dared she disgrace the family so? I hate her memory, even though believing her dead and if I knew she were alive I should be tempted to carry out my threat, and shoot her on sight,” he replied angrily to the taunt of his stepfather that day on which Mr. Finley’s mind was so engaged in plotting the best means by which to extort money from Colonel Falconer for keeping the dark secret of his wife’s past. He did not know that his malice had overreached itself, and that the fury smoldering in Willie’s impetuous mind, and fanned into flame by his sneers and gibes, would bear fruit to disappoint him of all his avaricious hopes. Willie was almost twenty now, with an overstrained sense of honor, sharpened in intensity by his sister’s fault. He was sensitively alive to the disgrace that rested on the family name, and had brooded over it until he had grown morbid. His handsome young face remained dark and cloudy after Mr. Finley went out, and his thoughts were so absorbed that he could scarcely wait upon the customers who came in and out of the neat store. “Strange that he is always suggesting the thought that Pansy may be alive, after all. Perhaps he knows more than he chooses to tell,” he muttered. And the thought wore on him so that he went to the corner of a shelf, where his stepfather kept a private bottle, and took a drink of brandy to steady his shaking nerves. Then, from a case in a hiding place of his own he took a small pistol and examined it with gloomy eyes. “It is all right,” he muttered hoarsely; then, at the sound of a step entering the store, he replaced it hurriedly, and turned around, to face Mr. North, the father of the girl he loved. “Good afternoon, Mr. North. What can I do for you?” he inquired politely.