“From the first moment!” I repeated blankly. “From the first moment Paul thought that I was Madame Trème?”
My mind ran back over that meeting in the bookroom. I remembered his sharp, sudden speeches, the slight edge to his voice. I had thought him a coward with that hand in his pocket, and he, meanwhile, had imagined himself always under the eyes of the Red-Gold Strand.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Brane. “One of the force saw you get off the train at Pine Cone, and was struck by your resemblance to the famous criminal.” (I remembered the man whose scrutiny had so annoyed me.) “He reported at headquarters Madame's possible presence, and they realized at once that if she was in it, the Pine Cone case was apt to be both dangerous and interesting. There was big game somewhere. So, without telling me how serious the situation might be, they chose Hovey, and sent him down here as a student of Russian literature. They knew that Madame had never come in contact with him. Paul Hovey has rather a remarkable history, Janice. Would you care to hear it?”
I bent my head.
“He began life as a young man with great expectations, and a super-excellent social position. But he was very careless in his choice of companions. It was the love of adventure, I suppose, like Harry Hotspur and his crew. At a house-party, not a very reputable one I am afraid, on Long Island,—this was a good many years ago—he got mixed up in a very tangled web, and disentangled himself with such cleverness and resource, discovering the guilty man before the police had even sniffed a trail, that Skane, half as a joke, urged him to turn detective. Hovey, too, treated it as a joke, but, not long after, my dear, the poor boy got himself into trouble—oh, nothing wicked! It was a matter of holding his tongue and keeping other people safe, or telling the truth and clearing himself of rather discreditable folly. He held his tongue, and most people believed his innocence. I think every one would have stood by him, for he was enormously popular, if the very people from whom he had the best right to expect mercy and loyalty had not turned against him—his uncle who had brought him up, and the girl to whom he was engaged. He was disinherited and turned out of doors, and the girl, a worldly little wretch, promptly threw him over. Hovey went straight to Skane, who welcomed him like a long-lost child. Since then Paul Hovey has become famous in his chosen line of work. Now you know his history. I learned it—what was not already public property—from a man, a friend of Paul's dead father, a man who loves Paul dearly, and has known him all his life.”
I was not sorry—selfish as the feeling was—to learn that Paul, too, had a grievance against the world; that he, too, was something of a waif and stray, another bit of Fate's flotsam like myself.
“And from the first moment he thought I was Madame Trème?”
“Yes—and fell in love with you. A nice situation for a detective, was n't it? Don't start! You know he did. But I must run away before I tell you any more secrets. I must leave Paul Hovey to make his own apologies, to plead his own cause. I am tiring you, as it is. You are getting much too pink.”
“I will never give Mr. Hovey a chance to make his apologies,” I said sadly. “And I am certain, dear Mrs. Brane, that he will never try for the chance. Who would? Who would want to—to love the daughter of—”
It was here that I broke down, and she comforted me. “Janice, darling,” she said when I was a little quieter, “Love is a very mighty god, and though they say he is blind, I believe that he sees like an immortal. If Paul Hovey loved you in spite of his best will and judgment, against every instinct of self-preservation, loved you to his own shame and anguish when he thought you a woman dyed in crime, a woman who had attempted his life, do you think he will stop loving you when he knows your history and your innocence?”