She shook her head, and looking up at him with a sad smile, replied:
"Ah! I also thought it was a mistake, but, Roddy, it is only too true. These two days I have brooded over it, and these two nights. To-day, hearing that you had returned, I could endure the burden no longer. I thought of writing to you, but I had not the heart to put the terrible injunction on paper. I have wandered the whole afternoon in the hope of meeting you. I walked as in a dream, feeling indeed that I was doing wrong, but with this faint excuse for my disobedience, that, by telling you of it myself, I would spare you the terrible disgrace of being driven from my father's door, if you presented yourself there without knowing his determination. For myself such a misfortune would have been a death blow."
Every word went burning to Roderick's heart, but he had to master his own agony a moment, in the effort to support Pauline who had utterly broken down. When she had recovered sufficiently, he protested tenderly that there was a mystery in all this which he was unable to fathom, and entreated her to help him discover it by telling him minutely all that had happened since they had last met. She gradually summoned strength and composure enough to do so, relating in detail the scene in Cathedral square; the arrival of the Lieutenant-Governor's aide-de-camp; his delivering of a letter to her father; the conversation that took place between the latter and the officer; her father's visit to the Chateau; his return therefrom; and, relapsing into tears, she narrated how her father had found her reading a note from Roderick, and how he had ordered her to cast it into the fire.
The young officer did not lose the significance of a word. At first the mystery remained as impenetrable as ever, but after a while a thread of suspicion wove itself into his brain. He tried to brush it away, however, by rubbing his hand violently over his brow and eyes. It was too painful. It was too odious. Finally, he asked:
"Did your father give any reason why you should burn my note?"
"Ah! Roddy, why do you force me to say it? When I told him that you had sent him your regards, he replied 'he has just sent me his hate!'"
These words solved the mystery. Hardinge saw through it all, distinctly, sharply, unmistakeably. He drew a long breath, and his broad chest swelled with the fresh air from the river.
"Pauline, my dear," he said with that tender authority with which a strong man can miraculously revive a weak, drooping woman, "Pauline, take heart. It is all a terrible mistake and it will be explained. Your father has suspected me of a dreadful thing, but I am innocent and will convince him of it. I will see him this very night and make him and you happy."
She raised her hands imploringly.
"Fear nothing, darling, I am as certain as that we are standing here together, that it is all a fearful misunderstanding, and that I will make it clear to your father, in a quarter of an hour's conversation."