Chapter XXXI

The sweet, high pitched voice reached every ear in the room distinctly. Every one was surprised at the assertion; but they saw that Aline had forgotten herself, and all were wise enough not to take any apparent notice of the admission. She continued, confidentially.

“You see, Mr. Lane, we lived on a farm in the country, about two miles from Chester, while I was a child. Before I was grown up papa sold the farm, and came to live at the cottage here, and here we have been ever since, and I have never been five miles from Chester in my life.”

She saw some sort of a wonder on his face, and added, gayly:

“I see that you are wondering at me, Mr. Lane. Perhaps I should not have confessed to such lamentable ignorance of the world around me?”

“On the contrary, I am charmed to have you confess it.

“‘Where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise.’”

She looked at him in some little wonder. The tone of his voice was peculiar; but when she looked at his face, it appeared perfectly calm and frank. After a moment’s silence, he continued:

“To one versed in the lore of the world as I am, it is refreshing to meet with one so guileless and so innocent of the evil of the world. I am not so enviable as you think me, Miss Rodney. A knowledge of the world is not conducive to love of life.”

She had been slowly gathering her thoughts together while he talked. Quite suddenly the memory of her own knowledge of the world rushed over her--the knowledge that had come too late to save her from the evil.

Her face grew suddenly pale. She recalled the admission she had made just now, “I have never been away from Chester in my life.”

She grew frightened at the thought that she had almost betrayed the secret she was sworn to keep. Fortunately, this man to whom she was talking knew nothing and could make nothing of what she had said. But Dr. Anthony and the others--had they heard?

She glanced furtively around her. No one was observing her. Effie’s fingers were still straying over the piano, waking low, soft chords, and the doctor’s head was close to hers, as he whispered love’s delicious nothings in her willing ears. Mr. and Mrs. Rodney were looking over the pictures in the new magazine. Max had fallen asleep, as usual, on the convenient sofa. She thought, with a sigh of relief, that no one except Mr. Lane had been paying any attention to her.

“But I must be more careful next time. I shall betray everything some time if I suffer myself to relapse into my old thoughtless self,” she thought, and she became so suddenly quiet and _distrait_ that Mr. Lane began to wonder in his mind if he had unwittingly offended her.

She did not give him a chance to find out, for just as he was on the point of asking her whether he had been so unfortunate, she made some slight excuse for leaving the room and did not return that night.

But Mr. Lane’s brief interview with her had given him material for grave reflection.

He had quite decided in his own mind that she was pure, true, and innocent, as she was beautiful.

He said to himself that her trouble, whatever it was, might have come to her through folly or waywardness, but never through deliberate sin.

He was a close reader of human nature, as his profession necessitated he should be. He knew that he had made Aline temporarily forget her trouble, and he believed that every word that she had spoken to him had been the pure, unadulterated truth. Those frank blue eyes were the very well of truth and purity. They had looked at him frankly and guilelessly, and they had no falsehood in them.

Her frank and thoughtless admission had let in such a flood of light upon his mind as would have frightened Aline indeed could she only have known it.

“I have never been away from Chester in my life,” she had said, and the words rung in his hearing long after her fair, bewildering face had vanished from his sight.

If this were true, and Mr. Lane did not in the least doubt the assertion, what became of Dr. Anthony’s romantic story?

The place where Dr. Anthony had been called to attend the mysteriously wounded girl must have been about five miles from Maywood, declared the physician.

“Chester is five miles distant from Maywood.”

Mr. Lane repeated these words to himself, and his face began to burn and his heart to thump against his vest pocket.

He seized his hat and went out into the night air to cool his glowing face. Out under the cold, wintery sky, with its host of gleaming stars, he mentally shook himself.

“I have been a stupid dolt, a stark, staring idiot,” he cried, vehemently. “I shall never pride myself on my skill and acumen again. Only to think that I never reflected on that plain fact that Chester is five miles from Maywood. The girl has never been out of Chester, and oh, what a consummate stupid I have been.”

He was angry with himself, indeed. He accused himself of the most inexcusable stupidity. Only to think how he had scoured the country for miles around Maywood and never thought of Chester. It was the most natural mistake in the world, but he was bitterly angry with himself for having made it.

He walked along the pavement in front of the cottage, so absorbed in thought that he scarcely heeded the cold winter wind that sighed among the leafless trees and around the gables of the cottage. With the sight of Aline’s beautiful, innocent face had come an even deeper desire to fathom the secret of that strange absence.

“I will find it out this time; but will she thank me for it? Will any one thank me?” he asked himself, soberly, and he decided that it could not hurt Aline Rodney to have the truth revealed. He did not believe that any willful guilt could hide behind that smooth, white brow and those clear, true eyes.

“She would undoubtedly reveal it herself but for the vow of silence that binds her,” he said to himself. “I may even be doing her a favor by tracing out the secret and revealing it to her parents. Anyhow, I shall make it convenient to remain down here a week or two, and ‘we shall see what we shall see.’”

Absorbed in his thoughts he walked on past the strip of fence in front of the cottage a few paces down the street, without observing that he was directly before the tall, imposing gray stone mansion known as Delaney House. It stood well back among its leafless trees and ghost-like evergreen shrubberies and cedars that showed like sober-suited sentinels in the cold, white light of the moon. The house looked gloomy enough with its closed doors and heavily shuttered windows from whence no friendly light streamed forth to cheer the weary passer-by, but Mr. Lane did not notice it as he walked slowly past absorbed in his own vexing thoughts.

Absorbing as they were they were doomed to have a sudden and startling interruption.

The night had been intensely still save for the low whisperings of the winter wind as it swept past in restless sighs, but suddenly its calm was broken by a long, low wail that broke shudderingly upon the silence and repose of the hour, and swelled high and still higher until it became a fearful shriek of mad rage and impotent anger most terrible to hear:

“Ah--h--h! Ah--h--h!”

That loud, terrible, prolonged shriek fell suddenly and startlingly upon the ears of the detective. He sprung backward with a smothered cry and stared upward to where the sound seemed to issue forth.

His eyes fell upon the dark, silent façade of Delaney House.

“Ah!” he breathed, and like a horrible echo came that fearful shriek again.

“Ah--h--h! Ah--h--h! Ah--h--h!”

It seemed to float over his head and die away in the wandering breeze. Again he glanced up at the dark lowering front of Delaney House. This time its darkness was illumined by a line of light that glanced momentarily through the shutters, then abruptly disappeared.