Chapter XXIII

Mr. Rodney paused when he had uttered those words and looked gravely at his daughter. She had not quite taken in his meaning yet. She was looking at him with an air of blended surprise and incredulity.

“Papa, you must please excuse me for repeating your words over this time,” she said, anxiously. “You see I want to be sure that I understand you. Do you say that people will suspect _me_ of something disgraceful?--that they will have nothing to do with _me_?--that they will point the finger of scorn at _me_?”

“That was what I said, Aline,” he replied.

The blue eyes turned inquiringly to her mother’s face.

“Is it really true, mamma, or is papa only teasing me?” she asked, slowly.

“I am afraid it is only too true, my dear,” Mrs. Rodney answered, with a great, strangling sob.

A look of horror came into the great blue eyes.

“But, mamma”--she unconsciously turned from her father’s pale, stern face to her mother’s gentler one--“I have done nothing wrong. Why should my friends treat me so?”

Mrs. Rodney could not answer her. She looked at her husband.

“Aline,” he said, “do you remember when you were a little girl at school, the first line you used to write in your copy-book?”

“Yes, papa,” she replied, with a half-smile on her red lips. “It was this, ‘Avoid the appearance of evil.’”

“Exactly. Well, it is a maxim that goes with us through life. We should not only avoid evil, but even the appearance of it. Do you understand me, Aline?”

She bowed in silence.

“The world, society, people in general, my child, judge almost wholly by appearances. When there is a mystery, where there is secrecy, where every day of a young girl’s life does not lie fair and open to the public view, they suspect guilt, and they visit their suspicions on the offender in unstinted measure.”

A great change had come over Aline’s face. It was white and startled, the lips were drawn in a line of pain. He had made her understand at last. There was no need to ask as he did, half sorrowfully:

“Can you make the application, Aline?”

A long, deep, heavy sigh quivered over the girl’s lips. She raised her eyes to his as if deprecating his words. Her voice was full of sorrowful anxiety.

“Papa, is the world really so hard?”

“I do not call it hard, Aline--only just,” he answered.

She sighed and remained silent.

“Only just,” he repeated. “It asks that a woman’s life be kept fair and pure and spotless, open to the eyes of all beholders. It does not tolerate secrets or mysteries. But it is not hard, it is only just. All pure men and women concur in its decision.”

She did not speak, only gazed into his face with her large, clear eyes, as if waiting to hear more.

“Aline, you are young, you are beautiful, you love life, you are of a most social disposition,” he said. “Can you afford to shroud your absence during those three months in a veil of mystery? Can you afford to have your whole life blighted and ruined as it will be if you persist in your silence? Can you do without hope and pleasure, without love and lovers, without friends and without respect?”

Every word fell clearly and coldly. When he ceased there was a deep silence in the little parlor. They could hear the wild autumn winds sighing outside, hear the steady downpour of the rain, ceaseless as though “the heart of heaven were breaking in tears o’er the fallen earth.”

Aline was sitting motionless, her dark lashes drooped against her cheeks, one small hand pressed unconsciously against her beating heart.

“Of what are you thinking, Aline?” he asked, impatient of her strange silence.

She raised her eyes slowly, and looked at him with a mute misery that pierced his heart.

“Only of what you said, papa,” she answered. “Need it really be so bad as that?”

“No, it _need not be_ if you choose to save yourself,” he answered, almost savagely. “You have only to speak, Aline, only to clear yourself from the appearance of evil. You will surely do so now when I have so patiently explained to you the terrible cost of your silence. You will not persist in your suicidal willfulness.”

She sprung from her chair and stood leaning against the back of it, gazing at him with burning cheeks and heaving breast.

“Papa, you are only trying to frighten me,” she cried out, hoarsely. “It cannot be so bad as you say! You exaggerate it all! I have done nothing wrong, I am guilty of nothing but the willfulness and disobedience you have pardoned in me a thousand times! Why should any one be angry, why should any one blame me when I have done nothing wrong?”

“Nothing wrong? Do you call it then nothing to have stayed away these three months?” he asked her.

“Oh, surely you know I would have come home before if I could, papa!” she cried, clasping her white hands together in her earnestness.

“Who or what has hindered your return to us, Aline?”

“Papa, I must not tell you,” she wailed.

“You mean you will not,” he said, with bitter chagrin, for he had not believed her resolve would be proof against the penalties it entailed.

“I will not, then, since you will have it so,” she broke out, with a sort of desperate despair, while her blue eyes drowned themselves in sudden raining tears.

Then suddenly, before any one could prevent her, she flung herself face downward on the floor, and broke into stormy, tempestuous sobs and tears.

They gazed at her in consternation--no one attempted to soothe her. What could they say to the willful child who was rashly determined to blight her own young life?

At length, just as suddenly as she had thrown herself down, she sprung up again. She went to her father and stood meekly before him, hushing her sobs by a great effort of will.

“Papa, if all be as you say, then is my life indeed ruined,” she said, despairingly; “I must bear my fate, for I cannot change it. Oh, how gladly I would speak if I could! Listen to me, papa, dearest. I am not willful, I am not wayward, I would give one half of my life to have the liberty to tell you all you ask! But, papa, mamma, Effie, Max--my dear ones all, I am the most unhappy, most unfortunate girl in the world, for I have sworn an oath never to speak, never to reveal the secret of those three months. You may do with me as you will; the world may wreak its vengeance on me as it will, but I cannot help myself. I must bear it as best I can. My lips are sealed. I am solemnly sworn to silence!”

While they yet gazed upon her in speechless horror, she gasped, staggered, threw out her hands for some support, and missing it, fell heavily upon the floor. When they lifted her up she appeared like one dead.