Chapter XIX

They gazed at her in amazement. What was this? Aline not to tell where she had been these three months! What could she possibly mean?

“Aline, darling, you do not perhaps understand your mother. She is asking you where you have been. You must tell her, my child,” said Mr. Rodney, gently.

Aline answered him in the same words:

“Papa, I cannot tell her.”

Something very like anger came momently into Mr. Rodney’s kind eyes as he looked down into the sweet young face that lay nestled lovingly against his arm.

“No more willfulness, Aline,” he said, almost sternly. “You have run away from us and caused us a great deal of anxiety and sorrow. You have almost broken my heart, and your mother has been near to death’s door. You do not deserve that we should receive you back with so much love and forgiveness. But now that we have done so, you must be frank and explicit with us. You must tell us where you have hidden yourself so securely from us while we have been seeking you everywhere at so great an expense and trouble, to say nothing of our sorrow and anxiety.”

“Papa, it does not matter where I have been so that you have me back again safe and secure,” cried simple Aline.

She could not understand the dark frown that clouded his brow.

“It matters everything,” he declared. “What new whim possesses you, Aline, that you should deny us thus? Do you not suppose that we should be anxious over your whereabouts after hearing all that we have done?”

“I cannot understand who has told you so much, papa,” said the girl in wonder.

Mr. Rodney made a sign to Dr. Anthony. He came forward into the range of Aline’s vision.

“Doctor,” said Mr. Rodney, “do you recognize my daughter as the wounded girl whom you attended in the mysterious blue room?”

Aline gazed in wonder at the strange face as it looked down upon her. She rather liked its expression, it was so cheery and handsome, with its brown eyes, brown mustache, regular features, and expression of good nature.

He looked steadily and admiringly at the beautiful young face.

“I could swear to her identity,” he said, firmly. “It is the face of the wounded girl in the mysterious blue room.”

“I have never seen you before,” cried Aline. “How do you know these things which you assert?”

He smiled. Aline could find no fault with that smile. It was so kind and reassuring. He answered, pleasantly:

“You have never seen me, Miss Aline, because I wore a mask when I dressed your wound that night. But I remember your face distinctly.” He turned to Mr. Rodney. “May I tell her the story of that night?” he asked.

Mr. Rodney answered, “Yes.”

Aline lay listening silently, with dilated eyes, to his strange story.

“I was full of sympathy for you,” he said. “I felt quite sure that there was something wrong. I did not like the strangeness of it all. I have tried again and again to find your strange prison, that I might rescue you from your bondage. I have been your friend ever since that night. If any one has maltreated you, Miss Aline--if you have been detained in that strange house against your will, tell me where to find the wretch, and I will punish him for you.”

“You are very kind, but I have nothing to say,” Aline answered, in a low voice of unconscious regret.

He looked at her in surprise.

“Do you mean to make a secret of it?” he asked her, in his clear, frank way.

“Yes,” she answered, calmly, and looking straight into his face with her blue, resolute eyes.

“But, my dear young lady, why should you do that?” he said, perplexed.

“That is my own affair,” she answered, with something of her old imperious temper ringing in her voice. “My business cannot concern you--a stranger. I consider that you are talking to me in a very impertinent fashion.”

Mr. Rodney put his hand hastily over the willful red lips.

“Your temper is not improved by your sojourn away from us,” he said, in a tone of marked displeasure. “Listen, Aline; this gentleman is not to be treated as a stranger by you. He is a valued friend, and, moreover, he is engaged to your sister Effie. He will be your brother, but I hope you will never cause him as much anxiety as you have done the rest of us.”

Aline put out her white hand frankly to the doctor.

“I congratulate you,” she said. “Effie is the dearest girl in the world!”

“So I think,” said Dr. Anthony, frankly; adding, gayly, “I think a great deal of you, too, Miss Aline, since but for you I might never have seen your sister!”

They all laughed. Aline made up her mind that he would be a charming brother-in-law.

“I should say that my running away has proved quite advantageous to the family,” said she archly, as she kissed the blushing Effie.

She thought that every one would agree with her. She could not understand why they all looked so grave. She had been brought up so simply and innocently in this quiet country town she had no knowledge of evil.

“Why do you all look so grave?” said she, pettishly. “If you aren’t glad to see me, perhaps I had better go back where I came from.”

“Where _did_ you come from, Aline?” exclaimed her father.

“You dear, curious old papa, I shan’t tell you!” replied Aline, with her merry laugh that sounded like music.

“You are jesting, Aline, but it is not an appropriate subject for a joke,” said her father. “Come, dear, I do not like to be kept in suspense. I am waiting to hear why you ran away from us, and where you went.”

She lifted her head from his arm, and looked up into his face with her bright, wide-open eyes. She saw that he was not jesting, that he was in intense earnest. She was inclined to resent his curiosity, as she termed it to herself.

“Really, papa, I cannot imagine why you make such a fuss over it,” she cried, with all the freedom of a spoiled child. “I should think you already knew why I went away. It was because I didn’t wish to stay in that hot, stuffy little chamber all day while you were enjoying yourselves at the picnic. So I went out for a little while, I meant to return directly, but--” she stopped short, and a sudden flush mounted up to her white forehead.

“And why did you not return, Aline?” her mother cried out, quickly. “What reasons did you have for staying?”

“I had the very strongest of reasons, mamma,” said the girl, and now they saw that she was half laughing, half crying. “The very strongest reasons, for I could not return.”

“But why, dear?” asked Effie, leaning on her lover’s arm, and looking deeply interested.

“Ah, ‘why, why’!--how you all do ring the changes on that one word,” cried Aline, in pretty petulance. “When I say that I do not mean to tell you, why cannot you leave me alone?”

She was in the most palpable earnest. They all saw that. They did not know what to say to her. She was so childlike, so innocent, she could not understand why it was really so necessary that she should explain her absence to them.

“Tell me one thing, Aline, my darling,” said her father, coaxingly. “How did you get out of your locked room?”

She locked her white hands around his arm and looked up into his face. There was a deep, warm color on her face, and her eyes were misty as if with tears that she bravely held back.

“Papa, darling,” she said, with a sudden quiver in her fresh young voice, “do not be angry with me, dear. Indeed, indeed, I do not want to be naughty or willful or unkind to you. But I cannot tell you how I left my room that day any more than I can tell you how I came back to you to-night.”

There was a dead silence. Aline did not know how strangely her words sounded to them all. She did not know that there was anything so strange and reprehensible in her silence. She did not realize that she was no longer a child, but a woman, every day of whose life should lie fair and open like a spotless page to every eye.

Her father put her suddenly out of his arms into a chair by his side.

“Aline, you are tired to-night. Perhaps you will tell us your story to-morrow?” he said, half inquiringly.

“Neither to-night nor to-morrow, papa,” she replied, in a vaguely troubled tone, for she began to feel alarmed at their persistency. “No, nor ever!”

“Do you realize what you are saying, Aline?” Mr. Rodney inquired, in a strange, measured tone, and gazing deliberately into her grave, sweet, perfectly frank blue eyes.

“Yes, papa, I realize it,” she replied, innocently.

“You will stain the whiteness of your life, of your young womanhood, with a secret at whose nature no one can guess--you will deliberately place yourself under a ban. You will not reveal this strange secret even to your parents--do you mean all this, Aline?” he asked, agitatedly.

“Yes, papa dear,” answered Aline.