Chapter XLV

Mr. Rodney’s firm and decisive declaration had the effect of frightening his fair young daughter. She looked at him, piteously.

“But, papa, I do not want to be married,” she exclaimed, with such a childish air of dismay and surprise that he could have laughed if he had not been so miserable. “I do not want to be married, I should not like to be married,” Aline repeated, forlornly.

“But, my dear, all women marry,” said her father.

“Not all,” replied she; “I know several who did not. There are Miss Palmer, Miss Brown, Miss Robinson.”

“Cross old maids, all of them,” Mr. Rodney replied. “I hope you will never be an old maid, Aline. Indeed, you must not think of such a thing. You will have to marry, and the man you marry must be Oran Delaney.”

“I dare say he will not want to be married any more than I do,” said Aline, with unconscious hopefulness.

A certain hard and grim expression came over Mr. Rodney’s handsome face.

“He will not have much choice in the matter,” he replied.

“Oh, papa!” the young girl cried, and a deep color rose up all over her face.

“Well?” he said.

“Would you give me to one who took me unwillingly?” she asked, in a tone of blended shame and reproach.

He was silent a moment, and his brows knitted themselves together in a straight, hard line. Aline, gazing wistfully at him, saw that gray hairs had come into his brown locks that were not there a few months ago. Her heart thrilled with pain and remorse.

“Aline, I do not know how to answer you,” he said. “God knows that I do not wish to force you upon any man. But your good name is irretrievably compromised, and nothing can clear it except a marriage with Oran Delaney. As you are, you can never hope to hold up your head in society again. As his wife, you would soon live down the scandal that now assails you. You would have some chance of happiness. He owes you this reparation, and I, as the true guardian of your happiness and honor, shall compel him to make it. It he refuses--” he paused, and an ominous light came into his eyes.

“If he refuses,” she echoed, faintly.

“Then I will kill him, or he shall kill me!” he replied, bitterly.

Aline sat gazing at him like one stunned. All the horror of her position rushed over her.

Was there indeed no other way out of the labyrinth of error in which she was involved than by this dreadful forced marriage?

All the native pride within her rose up in arms against it. Could she give herself up to be an unwilling bride forced upon an unwilling bridegroom?

She shrunk sensitively from the thought. Better be dead, she thought.

She looked at her father and said, with a babyish quiver of the sweet, red lips:

“Papa, I wish that Mr. Delaney had not saved me yesterday. I should then have been spared all this trouble and distress. My poor life is only a sorrow and disgrace to you all.”

Mr. Rodney did not answer. Perhaps his troubled thoughts ran in the same channel.

Aline waited a moment for him to speak, but as he remained silent and abstracted, she asked, timidly:

“Papa, will you not tell me how you became possessed of my secret?”

“What good can it do you to know?” he inquired.

“None that I can think of,” she replied, wearily. “It was only my natural curiosity that prompted me to ask the question.”

“At some other time, Aline, I will tell you,” said her father. “I would prefer not to do so at present.”

And after a moment’s hesitation, he abruptly left the room. Aline remained sitting wearily in her chair, gazing into the leaping flames of the bright coal fire with sad blue eyes that could scarcely see for the thick mist of tears that filled them. Her heart ached drearily in her breast. Something like despair thrilled through her as she sat there with her small hands folded on her lap.

“It were better if I had died yesterday--ay, it were better if I never had been born,” she murmured to herself, with a sudden passionate bitterness.