Chapter XXXII

He stood silently gazing at the windows where the light had so strangely flickered and disappeared with almost the swiftness of a flash of lightning. He was full of wonder over what he had heard and seen.

“What a horrible voice!” he said to himself. “It was neither that of a man nor woman, and yet it sounded distinctly human. What was it? I have heard such shrieks within the walls of madhouses, nowhere else. Can it be that some unfortunate lunatic is confined in Delaney House?”

He stood still, listening and watching some time, but he neither saw nor heard anything more. The mansion had returned to its usual gloom and silence. It almost seemed to him as if those fearful shrieks and that swift flash of light had been the figment of his own disordered imagination.

He went up to the front gate, which, like the fence, was of tall ornate ironwork, surmounted by bristling spear-heads, and softly tried the latch. It was unlocked and yielded readily to his touch. He entered the lovely neglected grounds and strolled through the quiet paths, careful to keep in the shadow and well out of the patches of wintery moonlight that gleamed on some of the white, graveled walks. He did not himself understand the strange caprice that had driven him to enter the private grounds of one who was wholly a stranger to him, but it led him blindly on.

“If the owner should catch me trespassing on his grounds I might find myself rather _de trop_,” he thought, grimly, but he did not turn back. He did not think it likely that the master of Delaney House would wander in that dreary, deserted garden on such a night.

Leaving the vicinity of the house, he strolled slowly on and came out at that end of the garden which was simply walled by the gable end of Mr. Rodney’s cottage. Still in the shadow himself he saw a sudden light thrown on the ground by the reflection of the light from a window. He glanced up quickly and saw that it shone from the casement of Aline Rodney’s room.

He drew back further into the convenient shadow cast by a tall, dark evergreen-tree, and looked up. He saw that the curtain at the window had been drawn aside by a small white hand. The next moment he saw a fair young face gazing out wistfully through the pane into the moonlit night whose mystic shadows lay long and dark around Delaney House.

It was Aline Rodney’s face. He gazed upon it, eagerly, as it stared out with parted lips and wide, despairing eyes at the dark, gloomy house.

“What is she doing there? What interest can she have in Delaney House?” Mr. Lane asked himself, soberly.

The beautiful grave young face gave no answer to his question. There was upon it an expression of wistful sadness and pathetic sorrow that went to his heart, strong man though he was. She remained for some time gazing sadly out into the wintery darkness, then slowly retired and dropped the heavy curtain between herself and the dreary scene.

Mr. Lane retraced his steps back through the shrubbery toward the house again. He went around to the front entrance and looked curiously at the great carved oaken door.

He was struck by a coincidence with Dr. Anthony’s story.

The front door was reached by a flight of wide, marble steps.

“Strange!” he muttered to himself. “What if this should prove to be the house!”

He gazed longingly at the dark stone walls. He would have given anything could his gaze have pierced through them in quest of the hidden blue room of Dr. Anthony’s story. A dozen vague suspicions were floating formlessly through his mind, but each thought hovered like a dark-winged bird of omen around Delaney House.

“Can it be that the secret is hidden here?” he asked himself. “Have we all been searching far and wide for Aline Rodney while she lay wounded and hidden at her father’s very door?”

The suspicion took hold upon his mind with startling pertinacity. It grew into a settled belief even while he stood there gazing fixedly at the close shut, forbidding looking door.

“Well, if it be so or not, I shall find it out before I leave Chester again,” he said to himself, with a certain resolution in his tone, as he let himself out of the gate into the street again.

He went back to the cottage and met Dr. Anthony coming out to look for him.

“I thought you had run away, Lane. Where have you been?” asked the doctor.

“I came out to smoke a cigar. You know my old bachelor habits,” Mr. Lane answered indifferently.

“You must be half frozen. It is a very cold night. Come in and warm your fingers before we go,” said his friend.

They went in, and though they rallied Mr. Lane on his long absence in the cold night air, he did not say one word on what he had seen and heard. The time had not come yet.