Chapter II

She tried to summon a smile to her lips, but they only quivered instead. Spite of her innocent propensity for getting into trouble, Aline was very sensitive. The ludicrous side of her position did not strike her in her awe of Oran Delaney. She summoned all her fortitude to her aid, and looked down into the dark, handsome face, waiting to hear him speak.

But he did not do so. His upraised eyes stared straight into her own with a gaze full of wonder and perplexity; his dark mustached lips even smiled slightly. He would not speak. He was evidently waiting for her to take the initiative.

Seeing this, Aline made a great effort. She leaned out of the window, and gasped, rather indistinctly:

“I--I beg your pardon, Mr. Delaney. I didn’t mean to throw the book out--that is, I meant to throw it out, but I didn’t mean to hit you! I didn’t know you were there!”

Having mumbled out this comprehensive apology, Aline waited anxiously for his answer.

She saw a smile creeping around his lips, as the ludicrous state of the case dawned on him. The face that looked so cold and stern, as she watched it daily under the shadow of his broad-leaved hat, did not appear so terrible now, as he stood with uncovered head gazing up at her. It even had a beauty of its own, if one fancied straight, even features, an olive skin, dark, magnetic eyes, dark, clustering locks, tossed carelessly back from a broad, intellectual brow, and a smile that, when it curved the mustached lips, lent the charm of fascination to his whole face. That smile, as it shone on Aline now, inspired her with unconscious courage. She continued, pleadingly:

“I hope you will excuse me, sir, and--and--if you please, I hope you will not tell mamma.”

He picked up the book, and, turning the leaves, asked, in a deep, musical, slightly amused voice:

“If you did not intend the missile for me, may I ask why you threw the book out at all?”

“I was mad,” said Aline, flushing a little at the admission.

“Mad--with such a good book as this? Sermons, aren’t they?” inquired Oran Delaney, lightly, as if talking to a child, which, in fact, she appeared to be, as seen at the window. Her face looked very young. He could not judge of the tall, rounded figure as she rested on her elbows, and looked down at him.

“Yes--sermons--but awfully dry, you know,” she returned apologetically; “but, after all, you know, I oughtn’t to have thrown them away; mamma wouldn’t like it. Will you please throw the book back to me, Mr. Delaney?”

He made several attempts to do so, but Aline was not clever at catching. It eluded the white, outstretched hands every time, and fell back into her neighbor’s garden. They both laughed. Aline began to think that her neighbor might not be such an ogre, after all.

“Twice you have let it fall back upon my head,” he said. “You are too clumsy to catch it at all. Come down to the window in the first story, and I will hand it up to you.”

“I--can’t,” replied Aline, flushing very red indeed.

“Why not?” wonderingly.

“I am locked into my room,” flushing deeper with shame.

“Impossible! Who is your jailer?” inquired the gentleman.

“Mamma; she has locked the door and gone off, leaving me here to read those dreary sermons that I threw away.”

There is a moment’s silence. Aline reads palpable surprise on her neighbor’s face. The shame-flush deepens on her own.

Presently, with a laugh, he says:

“You must have been a very naughty girl, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to be, but mamma and Effie said I was. So they went off to the picnic, and locked me in here to punish me,” Aline said, growing confidential as her dread of Mr. Delaney grew less. “And oh, if they ever find out that I threw a book and knocked your hat off, I shall never hear the last of it. You won’t tell--will you?” pleadingly.

“What would they do to you?--lock you into your room again?”

“Worse than that, perhaps. I dare say they would devise some new punishment worse than any I have suffered yet,” sighing.

“Are they cruel to you?”

“Oh, no, only when I get into scrapes, as they say I am always doing. I am mischievous, they say, but I never mean to be. The way I get into trouble is like I did just now, you see, without knowing it,” she explains, plaintively.

“A spoiled, willful child,” Oran Delaney says to himself, smiling; then, aloud: “Well, about this book--how am I to return it to you?”

“I don’t know--and mamma will be so vexed with me,” plaintively. “Cannot you think of a plan?”

The sweet entreaty in the blue eyes moved him strangely. He looks around.

“Let me see. There is a step-ladder hereabouts used by the gardener in training vines against the wall. I might climb that.”

“Oh, pray do,” she clasps her hands entreatingly, and he goes away in search of the article.

Returning with a light, convenient step-ladder, he places it against the side of the house beneath the window. Her voice arrests him as he is about to ascend it.

“Oh, if you please, Mr. Delaney, I should like a bunch of your nice roses,” this rather timidly.

“Should you?” he says, surprised; then he looks around him at his beautiful garden glowing with all the lavish wealth of July--roses and lilies, and all the sweet sisterhood of flowers. From the green bowers and blooming beds of the garden, he lifts a keen glance to the upper windows of his stately house. The blinds are tightly closed at every window, an air of gloom and desertion pervades the scene. His glance goes back to that girlish face that is sweeter than all his flowers.

“You love flowers?” he says.

“Oh, so much!” she breathes, clasping her hands in pretty unconscious earnestness. “I wish that your garden were mine!”

“Are you aware that you are transgressing the tenth commandment?” he inquires, dryly.

“Am I? I don’t care. I can’t help envying you that splendid garden. You may have your house, and its ghosts, and welcome, but I do want your flowers.”

“Ghosts,” he says, and a slight frown darkens on his brow.

“Yes, there _are_ ghosts in that big, gloomy house, aren’t there? People say so, at least,” she answers.

He makes no answer. The half smile he has worn until now fades from his face. He remains lost in thought a moment, then abruptly turns the subject.

“Since you like flowers so well, you may come down and take all you want.”

“How?” she asks, bewildered.

“Down the ladder,” he replies, carelessly, and Aline catches her breath.

To be permitted to set foot in that lovely spot, than which it seems to her the garden of Eden had not been lovelier--to fill her hands with those exquisite flowers, and her heart and soul with their fragrance. It seems too good to be true. But, down the ladder? Would that be right? A premonitory vision of mamma’s horror darted into her mind. She set the temptation side by side with the scolding and the punishment, and weighed them, and, a true daughter of Mother Eve, she let her own willful desires triumph.

It was so pleasant to think of escaping from that stifling chamber, and reveling in green grass and tender flowers and springing fountains. She asked herself if it could be very wrong to escape from her prison for a very little while? As for descending the ladder, she did not mind that very much. I am ashamed to state that my heroine had been reproachfully accused of tomboyish propensities by her relations.

She looked down a little wistfully into Oran Delaney’s dark, proud face.

“Do you think it would be very wrong if I came down?” she said.

“I cannot see where the harm would be,” he replied, lightly.

“Then, if you will go away down that path there, I will come down the ladder and get some roses,” said Aline; and he laughed and walked away.