Chapter XX

Mr. Rodney gazed at his daughter for a few moments in blank silence. It had suddenly dawned upon him that, with all her childish ways and innocent young beauty, Aline was a woman in years.

“Standing with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet.”

She was eighteen years old, but until to-night she had seemed like a child. She had the frank heart of a child, and her mother had never put her forward in society as a woman. The bloom had never been brushed from her heart by a lover. She had never had a secret from her parents in her life. She had been open, frank, and guileless, and singularly confiding.

Her course now was utterly unlike Aline’s former ways--it was strange, unfilial, and incomprehensible.

As he gazed at her silently now, the subtle change in her struck him most forcibly. It existed not only in her mind, but her face.

Now that he looked at her more closely, he saw that Aline’s pretty oval face had grown thin and pale; her eyes, always large and bright, were more so than ever now. They were not the happy, careless eyes of the child Aline. They had a brooding shadow in them--a new expression, almost of pain. The red, smiling lips had acquired a certain gravity. There was a soul looking out of the beautiful pale face now, illumining its ethereal loveliness like the light behind a crystal vase.

“Some new experience of life has come to the child since she left us. Her mind is expanded and developed into that of a woman,” he said to himself.

With that thought came trouble, sorrow, and vague regret, mixed with a certain horror of the mystery she persisted in throwing around the months of her absence. Tremblingly he asked himself what did that strange reserve mean? Was it the impenetrable veil thrown around a disgraceful secret?

Disgraceful! He started and chided himself. Was he linking the thought of disgrace with her, the child of his heart, his bright, beautiful darling, who had always been his favorite child? No, no, sin could never touch her, she was too pure, too true, too innocent. He gazed anxiously into her sweet, blue eyes, and in spite of the vague shadow he saw there, they were still frank, and open, and honest; she was still as innocent as a child, although as lovely as a woman. Whatever had come to her in those months of absence, deepening her experience of life, it had not brought her any worldly knowledge. The thought that any one could think hardly of her for that secret she was keeping had never dawned upon her inner consciousness.

Mr. Rodney knew the world with all its evil ways, and he was a man of strong intellect and strong impulses. He vaguely scented trouble if Aline persisted in her strange course of conduct.

Her simple air as she answered his last question almost dismayed him. What a child she was still in spite of her years!

“Look at me, Aline,” he said, gravely.

She turned her sweet, flower-like face obediently to his, and met his stern inquiring look with the full gaze of her lovely violet eyes. The full white lids and long, curling black lashes raised fully from them, gave them an air of innocent candor and tender appealing. It was not possible that sin or shame could stain the pure white soul looking out at him from those splendid portals of light.

“Aline,” he said, abruptly, “I can scarcely credit the sincerity of your refusal to speak. Perhaps you have not counted the cost.”

“The cost, papa?”

Honest amazement looked out at him from the dark-blue orbs.

“The cost,” he repeated, with stern brevity.

“But, papa, I do not understand you. I went away because mamma had punished me, and I was vexed and did not mean to stay in all day. And--and--I could not come back when I wished to do so. There were reasons why I could not do so--all my own fault, remember, papa; and so when I come at last--when I come back loving you all more dearly than ever, and quite determined not to be naughty ever again, you look at me so strangely, you talk to me so sternly. You ask me, have I counted the cost? I do not understand you in the least, papa. What do you mean by the cost?”

“The cost of your silence,” he said. “Do you not know that it is strange, unnatural? Do you not know that I have a right to know where you have been, my child?”

“Of course I know that, papa. And I have always told you everything, haven’t I, papa?--haven’t I, mamma? I have never kept a secret from you in all my life; but I thought that if I chose to keep this one, you would not care--that it would not matter greatly. I do not see how it could matter to any one! But you are angry, papa. Was that what you meant by the _cost_? Shall you lock me in my room again if I refuse to tell?”

He stared at her, stupefied. What could he say in the face of such innocence and ignorance?

She rose from her seat impulsively, and threw herself down on her knees before him, folding her white arms across his lap, gazing up into his face earnestly and lovingly.

“Papa”--there was a wistful trouble in her voice, a sound as of unshed tears, a patient humility--“papa, you shall punish me as much as you please! I quite deserve it; I am willing to bear it. I will do anything you say without a murmur. I cannot tell you where I have been; I cannot tell you how I went away; but no one is to blame but myself. You know how wild and willful I have been. I brought all this upon myself, and I will bear the consequences. Punish me as you will, papa, only forgive me and love me again!”

“Aline, this is the most sheer obstinacy,” he said, looking down at the lovely tear-stained face, for two great sparkling tears had flashed from under her dark lashes and rolled down upon her cheeks. “I do not wish to punish you--I only wish to forgive you, but you make it too hard for me by your willfulness. Tell me the truth, my darling.” He bent down suddenly and clasped her in his arms with inexpressible love and earnestness. “Tell me, Aline, where you have been; and if you have suffered wrong at the hands of any one, I will find means to punish that wrong in the most terrible fashion!”

She slipped from his arms to the floor, and crouched there, with a strange trouble written all over her face.

“Papa, I can tell you nothing--nothing!” she murmured, in hoarse, strained accents.

All the tenderness in his face was displaced by sudden anger.

“Aline, I no longer plead to you for your obedience,” he exclaimed, sharply--“I _command_ you to tell me the truth!”