Chapter XLI: “Aline, you have not asked me who saved your life, yet?”

“No, mamma.”

It was the morning after Aline’s almost fatal accident, and she was sitting up in an easy-chair before the fire, in a pretty, bright blue wrapper. She was very pale and quiet. She had been listening to her mother, who had been telling her the details of her rescue, and who now remarked in wonder:

“Aline, you have not asked me who saved your life, yet.”

“No, mamma,” the girl answered, in a tone of visible embarrassment, while a faint color rose to her cheeks.

“I should think you would be curious over it,” said Mrs. Rodney, in a tone of slight disappointment.

“I have not thought about it,” the young girl replied, evasively.

“Then you will be astonished when you learn who the person was--the very last one you or any one else would have thought of,” declared Mrs. Rodney.

“You make me feel quite curious, mamma,” said Aline, with a faint smile, and a tone so listless it belied her assertion of interest.

“I do not suppose, if you guessed all day, that you would come at all near the truth,” pursued Mrs. Rodney.

“I suppose not,” answered Aline, laughingly.

She leaned back wearily, and watched the leaping flames of the fire with a smothered sigh. Oh, if only her mother would but drop the subject.

But Mrs. Rodney had no intention of doing so.

“Indeed you would not,” she went on. “You would sooner think of any one else that you ever knew, though indeed you never knew this gentleman!”

“Then it was a stranger,” said Aline, seeing that an answer of some sort was expected, and feeling a guilty consciousness of deceit, for she had an intuitive knowledge that Mr. Delaney had saved her life. She had caught a glimpse of his darkly handsome face behind the tree Max had pointed out to her just as she crashed through the thin ice into the river.

“Yes, it was a stranger, although you have seen him a thousand times, and although you know his name. Prepare to be surprised, my dear. Only think, it was our unsociable neighbor, Mr. Delaney!”

Aline knew that she was expected to appear greatly surprised, but to have saved her life she could not have enacted such a fraud. She was too frank and honest. She could only falter out, embarrassedly:

“Mr. Delaney!”

“Yes! I knew you would be surprised. Every one was,” said Mrs. Rodney. “I was surprised, and, to tell the truth, Aline, I was proud, too. Just to think, after the mean way the Chester people had treated us, that the richest and grandest man in the place should risk his life to save yours! Oh, how grateful I feel to him for his kindness!”

“Grateful!” murmured Aline, in an indescribable tone.

“Yes, indeed!” cried Mrs. Rodney. “Why, my dear, you might have perished for any help those other men would have given you--that is, they did bring a rope, but that would not have been any good if Mr. Delaney had not gone into the water and brought you up from the bottom.”

“It might have been better had he left me there,” the girl murmured, half to herself.

Mrs. Rodney shuddered at the bare thought.

“Oh, how glad I am that he did not,” she exclaimed. “I feel like going down on my knees to thank him for his bravery!”

“Thank _him_! Thank Oran Delaney? Oh, mamma!” cried Aline, with irrepressible agitation.

“Why, yes, my dear; of course we should thank him,” cried Mrs. Rodney, “and yet, strange as it seems, your papa and I are at a loss to know how to do so. You see, he is so strange. Although he saved your life, he has never called or sent to inquire how you are. And yet, one would suppose he would take that much interest in you, seeing that he risked his life for you.”

“I dare say he would prefer not being thanked,” murmured Aline.

“Do you think so? And yet, it would look very ungracious in us to neglect doing so. It would appear as if we thought the saving of our daughter’s life not even worthy a word of thanks. I should not like to have him think that we undervalued either your life or his services,” said Mrs. Rodney, with natural pride.

“What can it matter what he thinks? I should not say one word to him,” cried Aline, with sudden peevishness.

Mrs. Rodney gazed at her in surprise.

“Aline, I never did understand your strange nature,” she said, rather coldly. “Do you mean for me to think that you are not grateful to Mr. Delaney for his inestimable service in saving you from such a horrible death?”

Aline flushed under the rebuking glance her mother bent upon her.

“Not exactly that, mamma,” she said. “But Mr. Delaney is so unsocial and retiring, I thought he might not care to be intruded upon, even to receive our thanks for what he has done. Of course I am grateful. I was dreadfully frightened down there in the water. I did not want to die, although I had as well be dead as living, since my life is ruined and blighted. But I dare say Mr. Delaney has almost forgotten the occurrence by now, and I do not think we have any right to intrude upon his privacy even to air our gratitude.”

Mrs. Rodney did not take this view of the case at all.

“I should not think it an intrusion if any one came to thank me for saving life,” she said. “In any case, I shall thank him; but, since he is so reticent and unsocial, perhaps the best way would be to send him a letter--don’t you think so?”

“Yes, I think so,” answered Aline, closing her eyes with a weary sigh.

She thought of the letter she had thrown into the garden to him, begging him to save her good name by allowing her to break the vow of silence he had imposed upon her. He had refused her prayer; he had allowed her hopes to be ruthlessly blasted, without lifting a finger to prevent it; and yet he had risked his life to save hers. She could not understand it.

“Why was he there? People say he never goes out; yet he was at the church, and he was at the river. Was he watching me?” she asked herself, and the thought only made her wonder the more. What did his interest mean? “Twice I have owed my life to him,” she thought. “And yet he has suffered me to lose that which was dearer than life--my good name! I do not know what to think of him--while I hate him for the one thing, I must needs be grateful to him for the other.”

She closed her eyes and lay musing on those perplexing questions. Her thoughts went back to the days she had spent at Delaney House, and to the horrible mysterious Thing that had so terribly assaulted and wounded her. She wondered, as she had often done before, what that creature was to Oran Delaney. Why did he shut himself up alone in that great gloomy house with such a terrible companion for his solitude? She shuddered at the thought of it--the ghost of Delaney House as he had called it. The remembrance of those awful, maniacal shrieks rung in her hearing often, and often, chilling the bounding life-blood in her young veins.

“Perhaps it will kill Mr. Delaney some day,” she said, to herself, and she shuddered at the thought. Death seemed a terrible thing to this fair young girl in whose veins the tide of life flowed so strong and free. She dreaded the cruel grave, its darkness, its nothingness, its gloom.

The sudden opening of the door roused her from the gloomy musings that began to steal over her.

Mr. Rodney entered abruptly.

Aline turned her head with a smile toward her father, but the gentle beam faded from her lips, and a cry of terror broke from her at sight of his face.

He was pale to ghastliness, his blue eyes seemed to almost emit sparks of fire, so angrily did they blaze upon her. His face was almost contorted with the strong agitation that possessed him.

Aline half started up, filled with a blind terror.

“Papa!” she gasped.

He caught her roughly by the shoulder and shook her so fiercely that she fell back in her chair, hiding her white face fearfully in her hands. He looked as if he were about to kill her as she crouched in her chair, with her face hidden from his wrathful gaze, while she trembled like a leaf in a storm.

Mrs. Rodney sprung up and ran hurriedly to him. She caught his arm in both her delicate white hands.

“Oh, Mr. Rodney, pray do not be so rough with Aline! You will kill her!” she cried.

He shook her off rudely almost as he had shaken his daughter. Indeed, he was so strongly agitated, that he did not seem to know the extent of his violence.

“Better for her if she were dead!” he broke out, bitterly. “Better for us if she never had been born!”

“Oh, papa, what have I done?” Aline wailed out, frightened by his fierce denunciations.

“Done! What have you not done?” he stormed at her, fiercely. “Oh, wretched, shameless girl, whom I have nurtured at my fireside and in my heart! How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have such a child! Would to God you had perished yesterday rather than live for me to tell you your shame to-day!”

“Shame!” the girl broke out with sudden passion and violence, while the deep color flooded her exquisite face with crimson. “Do not apply that word to me, papa! I have done nothing, nothing!”

“What can you mean?” gasped Mrs. Rodney, growing as pale as her daughter.

He glared at them fiercely, his handsome face disfigured by passion.

“I mean,” he said, dropping his voice to a low, tense sound of intense bitterness--“I mean that I have discovered Aline’s shameful secret.”

“Papa, papa, you have discovered it! You know it, and yet I have not had to break my vow! Oh! how glad I am!” cried Aline, and a light of joy broke over the fair face, almost transfiguring its beauty. Such happy roses glowed on her countenance, such a radiant light shone in the deep blue eyes as struck her father with wonder.

“Aline, I cannot understand what you mean,” he said, sharply. “I have discovered nothing that could make you happy. This, that I have to tell your mother, is enough to strike you dead with shame at her feet, because you have so dishonored her!”