"What--what do you mean?" she gasped, looking at him in a kind of terror and half rising, as though she would flee from the room.
"Mr. Underwood came here last night to see you, didn't he?" he asked, in a matter-of-course tone.
The ready tears overflowed the brimming violets, and though she dabbed them away with a trifle that she called a handkerchief, they continued to well up and overflow, while she kept her eyes fixed upon him.
"I--I was going away. Papa said that I had to go to my aunt in Williamston, so--that Hen-- Mr. Underwood c--could not come and see me. And he c--couldn't even come to say goodbye, so he came to the garden, and--and--I was afraid some one might see him if he kept hanging around,--it wasn't my fault,--he wouldn't pay attention to me when I told him never to come again,--"
"So you went down to the garden to say goodbye to him," said Burton, cheerfully. "Well, that was kind of you, and I don't think for my part that you could have done any less. He loves you and you love him and you had a right to say goodbye to him before you went away. Of course you would stand up for him, just as he would stand up for you. I understand!"
Miss Hadley was so surprised by this mode of attack that she could only stare at him in silence.
"Now the point that I want you to tell me," Burton continued, "is just when you left Mr. Underwood in the garden and returned to the house."
She continued to stare in fascinated terror.
"You came in through the window in the drawing-room, didn't you?"
She made the slightest possible sign of assent.