Chapter XVIII

It was the figure of a girl wrapped in a long black water-proof cloak, whose concealing hood, fallen back from her features, showed them pale as death, with a pallor more remarkable by contrast with her night-black brows and lashes, and wet and dripping dark hair. It was Aline Rodney’s face, but the eyes were closed, and the trance of deep unconsciousness was upon her.

They knelt down beside her and loosened the dripping wet cloak from her lissom, slender form. It was their own Aline, indeed. The slight pretty figure was clothed in the simple blue gingham dress she had worn the day they last beheld her. The same neat buttoned boots were on the small pretty feet. They did not seem to have been worn or damaged in all the time she had been away from home.

Mr. Rodney lifted her helpless figure in his arms and carried her to the fire. He wrung the water from her dripping tresses and bathed her face with restoratives that Effie hurriedly brought. In a very few moments she revived. The dark-blue eyes fluttered open, she looked up into her father’s face, she saw them all kneeling around her--mamma, Effie, Max, all her dearly beloved ones, and a smile beamed on her face and a cry of thankfulness broke from her lips.

“Oh, papa, oh, mamma, am I really home again? I am so glad, so glad! I can scarcely realize it!”

They half smothered her with kisses and caresses. They quite forgot Dr. Anthony standing apart, a happy, sympathizing, though silent spectator. Mrs. Rodney took her restored daughter in her arms, her tears rained on the beautiful white face.

“Oh, Aline, Aline,” she cried, “you must forgive me for punishing you so! I thought it was for the best. I did not dream that anything would go wrong. You are not angry now, are you, my dear? I have suffered so much, my love. I have been ill. I have almost died of grief since you went away; you must never leave me again.”

Aline returned the kisses and caresses with interest. She was quite ready to forgive and forget.

“I will try to be a good girl hereafter, mamma dear, so that you need never punish me again,” she said, wistfully and earnestly, and so differently from the former willful, perverse girl, that Mrs. Rodney was moved to sudden tears.

“Oh, my darling, where have you been?” she cried. “We have been looking for you everywhere. We have even had a great detective down here from New York trying to find you.”

Aline gazed silently into her mother’s face as she propounded these eager questions. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them.

“We heard all about the mysterious blue room, and--and your dreadful wound, and the man in the mask--and everything!” continued Mrs. Rodney, frantically, “but look where we would, we could not find you, and we were afraid you had been cruelly murdered. Oh, my darling, tell me where you have been?”

“Where have you been, Aline?” echoed her father, with unconscious sternness.

“Where?” cried Effie, with painful anxiety.

“Where?” asked Max, with boyish curiosity.

But to all of these anxious questions, and the more anxious look that accompanied them, Aline Rodney answered not a word.

Her dark head still rested against her father’s breast, and one arm was drawn lovingly around his neck. There was a smile of ineffable joy and peace on her face, but at Mrs. Rodney’s reference to the little room and her wound a look of wonder came into the dark-blue eyes.

“Mamma, who has told you all that?” she exclaimed.

“We have heard it all from Dr. Anthony, who dressed your wound that night,” cried Mrs. Rodney. “Oh, Aline, who was it that wounded you so cruelly, my dear? and where were you, and why did you not send for me?”

A look of sorrow and regret flashed over the sweet white face.

“Mamma, I cannot tell you,” answered Aline.