hed,
all that Pauline did was to stretch out her arms and lay her two
ungloved hands in the hands of Hardinge, while her face looked
imploringly into his and she murmured:

"O, Roddy, Roddy!"

They were then standing alone near the water, the two companions of
Roderick having ascended to the city. Gently and silently, he drew the
yielding form toward him until he could scan her features and learn in
those eyes, which he knew so well, the secret of her sorrow. But the
light of the eyes was totally quenched in tears, and the usually mobile
face was veiled by a blank expression of misery. Hardinge was
thunderstruck. All sorts of wild conjectures leaped through his brain.

"Speak to me, Pauline, and tell me what this means," he said
imploringly. "Has anything befallen you? Has any one injured you? Or am
I the cause of this grief?"

Still holding her extended hands clasped in his, and casting her eyes
upon the ground, she replied:

"O, Roddy, you cannot tell, and you will never know how wretched I am,
but it is some comfort that I can speak to you at least once more."

"At least once more!" These words quivered through him, chilling him
from head to foot.

"Pauline, I entreat you, explain the meaning of all this," he exclaimed.

"It means, Roddy, that I who have never disobeyed my father, in my life,
have had the weakness to disobey him this evening. I did not mean to do
it. I did it unconsciously."

"Disobeyed your father?"

"Yes, in seeing you again."

"Surely, you do not mean--?"

"Alas! dearest, I mean that my father has forbidden me ever to meet
you."

Roderick was so astonished that he staggered, and the power of utterance
for a moment was denied him. At last he whispered falteringly:

"Really, there must be some mistake, Pauline."

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