"No. I guessed it. I have extraordinary powers of divination. And the Somebody has been making my little girl miserable."
"He has broken my heart," said Pauline.
I pulled the collar of my fur-lined coat above my ears which the north-east wind was biting. Being elderly and heart-whole I am sensitive to cold. I proposed that we should walk up and down the jetty while she told me her troubles, and I hooked her arm in mine.
"Who was he?" I asked. "And what was he doing here?"
"Oh, Doctor! what does it matter?" she answered tearfully. "I never want to see him again."
"Don't fib," said I. "If the confounded blackguard were here now——"
"But he isn't a blackguard!" she flashed. "If he were I shouldn't be so miserable. I should forget him. He is good and kind, and noble, and everything that is right. I couldn't have expected him to act otherwise—it was awful, horrible—and when you called me by name I thought it was he——"
"And the contradictious feminine did very much want to see him?" said I.
"I suppose so," she confessed.
I looked down at her pretty face and saw that it was wan and pinched.