Chapter LVIII

Mr. Rodney was thinking too. He remembered the night that Aline had come home. All that was strange in her manner then was explained away now. He remembered how hard and stern he had been with her; how he had been goaded to desperation by the fear that she was a miserable sinner. A weight of care was lifted from his mind by Oran Delaney’s revelation.

“God, I thank Thee!” he cried, lifting his hands involuntarily to heaven, “that my beloved daughter is proved innocent of all the evil laid to her charge.”

“She is innocent as an angel,” said Oran Delaney. “I do not ask you to believe my unsupported testimony. Mrs. Griffin will confirm all that I have told you.”

He was silent for a moment, then added, gravely:

“I wish you to make public to the world all that I have told you, Mr. Rodney. It is my dearest wish, whether I live or die, to have Aline’s memory cleared from all stain. Let all my folly and shame be known, all my pride and weakness, so that she be proven innocent and deserving.”

“It is hard upon you, but it is only just to Aline and her family,” said Aline’s father.

“It is just, and I deserve it,” said Oran Delaney. “The world will censure me; but let it do so, I am ready to bear it. Indeed, it will be a relief to my mind to have the truth known. I am weary of evasion and concealment, even if concealment were possible any longer.”

A look of grave anxiety was on his pale, drawn face.

“There is a weight upon my heart that nothing can shake off,” he said. “Poor Julie Sanson--she whom I swore to the dying never to leave nor forsake--oh, what has been her terrible fate? Is she dead in the ruins of Delaney House, or in the drifts of snow?”

“Whichever has been her fate, it is a most happy release for her imprisoned soul,” said Mr. Rodney. “You cannot regret her!”

“No; only the horrible manner of her death, if, indeed she be dead,” Mr. Delaney answered.

“I do not believe that there can be any doubt as to that,” said Mr. Rodney. “If she had lived, we must have heard of it. My own opinion is that she never escaped from the burning house.”

“It is most unlikely,” said Mr. Delaney, and then he lay silent, musing deeply: “Was Julie Sanson, the poor, deformed lunatic dead, indeed? Was he free, indeed? Free--his heart gave a great throb of almost painful rapture at the thought--to marry Aline Rodney if she would give herself to him?”

“Tell me one thing,” said Mr. Rodney, breaking in, abruptly, on his musing mood. “Why did Aline come to you that night when I found out her secret?”

They looked at each other, steadfastly. A hot, red flush mounted to Oran Delaney’s face.

“She wished me to save the honor of her name by linking it with mine,” he said, in a low, pained voice.

“And you?” said Mr. Rodney, anxiously.

“I was not free, you know. I was bound to Julie Sanson by that wretched farce,” answered the other.

“You refused her request?”

“I could do no less,” Oran Delaney answered, in a low, tortured voice.

“My God, then, the child has been driven desperate! Who would have dreamed that my fury that night would have driven her to such a step! I shall never see her again. She has gone away and died of shame for her thoughtlessness,” cried Mr. Rodney, wringing his hands in impotent despair.

“No, no, it was not thoughtlessness, it was the act of an angel,” cried Oran Delaney. “It was to save me from the threatened duel. She had no thought of self at all! And I, oh, my God, if she had not been an angel, I should have taken her at her word, for the temptation was almost too great for human endurance. For I love her, Mr. Rodney, with all the madness of a first, great love. Guess how cruelly hard it was to me to hear her sweet voice pleading for that which would have been Heaven itself to me, and to be forced to put her away from me!”