Chapter LI

When the retreating footsteps of his neighbor had died in the stillness of the night, Oran Delaney closed and locked the door against the outer darkness and returned to the library. He walked to the hearth and stood there gazing thoughtfully down into the glowing fire.

“The last night of my life, perhaps,” he said, half aloud. “Ah, me! how terribly I have been tempted to-night! How easy it would have been to have flung honor to the winds and yielded to the impulse that prompted me to seek happiness at whatever cost. Happiness--‘ay, there’s the rub’--should I have been happy? Would not conscience have pursued me with the bloodhounds of remorse?”

The weird shrieks of the fabled ghost of Delaney Hall had died away into silence now. In the stillness of the room a heavy sigh was distinctly audible as it drifted across the dark mustached lips.

“Poor child! Now I understand why she came to me on that strange mission to-night. She would have sacrificed herself to appease her father’s wrath and to save me! And I had to be cruel and unkind to her because I was not free!”

The wind sighed in the trees outside, and the bare branches rustled eerily. He thought to himself, with a shudder, that the snow must be deep by now. It had been falling almost steadily since yesterday. He remembered how the melting flakes had trickled down from Aline’s dark cloak.

“It must be cold and deep by now,” he thought. “I wish to Heaven that I were lying beneath it! Perhaps I shall be soon.”

He went to his desk, drew out writing materials, and began to write steadily. Half an hour passed in this occupation, when he was suddenly startled again by the loud alarum of the door-bell. The harsh clang pealed through the house discordantly. He pushed back his chair and hurried out into the hall.

“It grows late. Who can be coming now?” he said.

He opened the heavy door, and in the dim light of the hall lamp again saw Mr. Rodney’s face. It was pale with deadly wrath, the blue eyes were lurid with rage.

“You have deceived me, Oran Delaney,” he blazed forth, in accents of concentrated rage and hate. “Aline has never returned to her home. She is still here!”

“Here!” echoed the astonished master of Delaney House.

“Yes, here!” Mr. Rodney answered, stormily. “You need not deny it! Oran Delaney, if you do not give me back my child, I will kill you where you stand!”

The other reached out and drew the half-frantic man into the hall, closing the heavy door.

“My God, what do you mean?” he cried. “Aline not returned to her home?”

Astonishment and dismay were depicted on his countenance, but the infuriated man would not believe the signs of alarm and dread written on the face of the man whom he believed to be the destroyer of his fair young daughter’s happiness.

“Do not act a part with me,” he cried. “I warn you I will not bear it. Aline has left her home and fled to your protection. If you do not immediately restore her to me, I will not answer for the consequences!”

“She is not here, Mr. Rodney. I swear to you that she left this house five minutes before you entered it, this evening.”

“I will not listen to your prevarications. I _know_ that Aline is here. I will not leave Delaney House to-night without her!” cried Mr. Rodney, in a low tone of deadly menace, as he fixed his lurid, blazing eyes on the face of the man whom he hated with a terrible hate.

He was cruelly tortured. The thought of Aline’s dishonor was like a thorn in his heart. He was filled with a deadly rage against her. She was so young and beautiful to be so wicked. He felt as if he could easily kill her--her and the man who had so cruelly wrecked her young life.

The grim, hard smile that played around his writhing lips in the dim light of the stately old hall was terrible to see.

“I am a desperate man,” Mr. Rodney continued, hoarsely. “You have taken from me my ewe-lamb. You must look to yourself. I shall not leave this house to-night until I find her. If you do not give her up, I shall search the house for her--ay, even if I have to pass over your dead body to do so!”

They stood looking at each other steadily. Oran Delaney had whitened to a deadly pallor.

“Mr. Rodney, you know not what you ask,” he said. “Can you not take my word of honor that your daughter is not here? If you searched my house thrice over you would find nothing but dust and gloom and ghosts of the dead past.”

“What about the hidden blue room?” sneered Mr. Rodney.

Mr. Delaney changed color at those words.

“The blue room?” he stammered.

“Yes, the blue room where you kept my child hidden so long. Let me look there,” said Mr. Rodney.

“It is empty. There is no one there,” said Mr. Delaney.

“It is a falsehood! I do not believe you!” Mr. Rodney cried out, beside himself with fury, and for a moment there reigned an ominous silence. The hot blood leaped to Oran Delaney’s dark face, his black eyes blazed.

“I come of a race that does not brook such words as those, Mr. Rodney,” he said, coldly and sharply.

“Clear yourself of the imputation, then, by proving your innocence,” the other retorted.

“My word is my proof,” Mr. Delaney replied, proudly, and again there was a short silence.

Mr. Rodney, goaded to madness by his wrongs, raised his head and regarded his foe fixedly.

“I do not take your words as proof,” he said, angrily. “I demand the right to search this house. Do you allow it?”

“No!” thundered Mr. Delaney, fiercely.

“Then I shall do so without your consent!” exclaimed Mr. Rodney, advancing and attempting to thrust him aside.

Oran Delaney firmly barred his further progress by placing himself between him and the stairway.

“You dare thwart a wronged and maddened father!” cried Mr. Rodney, in almost maniacal wrath. “You thus bring down doom upon your own head! Thus do I avenge poor Aline’s wrongs!”

A pistol gleamed in his upraised hand; there was a sharp report, a flash of fire, a cloud of thick smoke. Oran Delaney fell forward on his face, and lay there motionless.