The servant showed him into a small reception room, and disappeared, while Finley waited--rather nervously, it must be confessed, for he was by no means certain that Colonel Falconer was out. What if he should appear, and kick the lying intruder out of doors? But fortune favored him, for in a very few moments the rustle of a woman’s garments was audible, and then Pansy appeared before him, simply clad in a pale-gray traveling dress, and with a tear-stained face and swollen eyes. She closed the door carefully behind her, then started back as she beheld her visitor. “You!” she exclaimed, in horrified tones. He rose and bowed profoundly. “I came to bring you the sad news of poor Alice, but I see from your face that you have already heard,” he said pointedly. Pansy made a scornful gesture, and sank into a seat. “What do you mean?” she demanded, trying to keep up an assumption of indifference that was only too plainly belied by her trembling voice and swollen eyelids. “Your sister Alice, Mrs. Falconer, fell, by accident, through an open hatchway at Arnell & Grey’s this afternoon, and is now on her deathbed. She raves for you--calls for you every moment. Can you have the heart to refuse to go to your dying sister?” She looked steadily at him, and answered defiantly: “I have heard of that accident at Arnell & Grey’s, but what is that to me? I do not know the poor girl.” “What is the use your trying to fence with me like this, Pansy? I know you!” cried Finley harshly, adding: “But I did not know your cursed pride was so strong, else I had not come for you, even to please that poor, dying girl, who begged me so piteously to come.” “She did not send you. She believes that her erring sister died,” Pansy answered irresolutely. “She believed that once, but not lately. There have been rumors that she is still alive, that she had been seen of late on the streets of this city, and that she is living a life of gilded shame. The story has preyed on the poor girl’s mind, and she sent me to seek you, that she might pray you with her dying breath to forsake your sinful life.” “You have told those base falsehoods to that poor, credulous child!” Pansy flashed forth indignantly, but he denied the accusation, and continued: “I cannot bear to return to her without you. The disappointment in her dying eyes would haunt me. I will make you a proposition, Pansy: Come with me to her dying bed, and I will manage things so that you shall see her alone. Not even her mother shall enter the room, and you shall go away again, and not a living soul be any the wiser for your presence there.” She saw that he was very much in earnest, that he would do as he said, and, twisting her little hands together in an agony of indecision, she exclaimed: