"I'll ask Olivia before I speak to her."
Mrs. Gardiner went up to her daughter's room—it had been her play-room, then her study, and was now graduated into her sitting-room. She was dreaming over a book—Tennyson's poems. She looked up, eyes full of hope.
"He has some good reason, dear," began her mother.
"What is it?" demanded Pauline.
"I can't tell you any more than I've told you already," replied her mother, trying not to show her feelings in her face.
"Why does he treat me—treat you—like two naughty little children?" said Pauline, impatiently tossing the book on the table.
"Pauline!" Her mother's voice was sharp in reproof. "How can you place any one before your father!"
Pauline was silent—she had dropped the veil over herself. "I—I—where did you place father—when—when—" Her eyes were laughing again.
"You know he'd never oppose your happiness, Polly." Mrs. Gardiner was smoothing her daughter's turbulent red-brown hair. "You'll only have to wait under a little more trying circumstances. And if he's right, the truth will come out. And if he's mistaken and John's all you think him, then that will come out."
Pauline knew her father was not opposing her through tyranny or pride of opinion or sheer prejudice; but she felt that this was another case of age's lack of sympathy with youth, felt it with all the intensity of infatuated seventeen made doubly determined by opposition and concealment. The next evening he and she were walking together in the garden. He suddenly put his arm round her and drew her close to him and kissed her.