Chapter V

The town-clock of Chester clanged the midnight hour out heavily from its hoarse, brazen throat--twelve!

Aline opened her blue eyes languidly--they were heavy, as if weighed down with lead--and looked about her.

They fell upon a scene utterly new and strange to her.

She was lying on a downy, rosewood couch, with draperies of pale blue silk and snowy lace, in the center of a large and high-ceiled room hung with azure silk, the elegant rosewood furniture being upholstered in the same lovely material. Everything about her breathed of unlimited wealth and taste, and the sweet aroma of flowers floated delightfully through the beautiful apartment from the delicate vases on the mantel, which had been filled with the choicest wealth of the garden by a lavish and unsparing hand.

“She revives, doctor,” said a woman’s voice.

Aline lifted her eyes quickly. An elderly grave-faced woman had come forward to the bedside, and was bending curiously over her. She was dressed in a nurse’s cap and apron, and had a kind, though homely looking face.

“Who are you, and where am I?” asked Aline, gazing at this strange face in bewilderment.

“Hush, my dear! You are sick, and must not talk,” answered the nurse with a slight frown.

She moved aside, and Aline saw two men behind her. A cry of fear broke from her lips. Both wore masks upon their faces; but, in the tall, well-knit figure of the foremost one, she recognized Oran Delaney.

He came forward and bent over Aline, whispering, hurriedly:

“Miss Rodney, I beg you, as a special favor, to keep silence a little while. Say nothing to this stranger of how you came by your wound.”

Her wound! She gave a start and memory rushed over her. She was conscious too of a sharp, stinging pain in her breast, and the clothing upon it, she perceived, was stiffened and red with clotted blood. So that horrible creature had not quite killed her!

She made no answer, for Oran Delaney moved quickly away, giving place to the masked physician. The nurse brought a basin of water, sponges, and linen, and he deftly bathed and dressed the wound, gazing curiously, now and then, at the beautiful, frightened face of his patient, who lay still as death with only a smothered moan, now and then, instantly stifled on her pale, almost icy, lips.

“I will be as gentle as I can,” he said to her, kindly, but Aline did not speak. She had closed her eyes and relapsed into unconsciousness.

When she unclosed them again, the masked physician was gone. She was alone with the quiet, grave-looking nurse in the dimly lighted room. A sensation of fear came over her. Why was she kept in this mysterious house with this strange woman? Where was her mother?

She looked at the stranger, and asked, anxiously.

“Am I in Mr. Delaney’s house?”

The woman gave her a quiet, affirmative nod in reply.

“And mamma--have you sent for her?” inquired Aline.

“You must not talk, my dear,” answered the woman, soothingly.

“You have not answered my question, and I want mamma, I must have her!” Aline cried out, in her imperious young voice, for she had forgotten her fear of her mother’s anger in her terror at the mysteries surrounding her. Oh, to be back under the safe little roof of the cottage that nestled under the shadow of this frowning mansion, to fling her arms around her mother’s neck, confessing her folly and pleading for forgiveness.

“You do not answer me,” she said, after waiting vainly for an answer from the quiet nurse. “Tell me, why am I detained in this house?”

“You ought to know how you came to be here, miss,” the woman answered, almost sullenly. “As for the rest, you are seriously wounded, and not able to be moved.”

“Then you should have sent for my mother,” said Aline, with pretty, peremptory dignity. “She will be dreadfully frightened at my absence. Let some one bring her at once.”

“Let us wait until to-morrow, dear,” said the nurse, persuasively.

“I cannot wait,” said the girl, uneasily, and with an unutterable yearning at her heart for the mother whom she had so often grieved by her follies and willfulness. “Where is Mr. Delaney? Go, and send him here. Surely he will let me have mamma.”

The woman glided softly out, and Aline, left alone in the strange room with its shadowy corners and dimly burning lamp, shuddered with fear. What if that dreadful, murderous creature should return and finish her work!

“I shall die here miserably, and never see mamma and home again. Oh, how terribly I am punished for my thoughtlessness and folly!” wept Aline, filled with bitter repentance.

The door unclosed, and Oran Delaney walked slowly into the room, followed by the nurse, who sat down discreetly at a distance from the bedside of her troublesome patient.

He turned up the dim, flaring night-lamp so that its full light fell on Aline’s beautiful, pale, distressed face. He had removed the disfiguring mask that hid his features from the masked physician, and his dark face looked stern and pallid and troubled.

“You sent for me?” he asked, in his grave, quiet voice.

“I want mamma,” she answered, like a child.

His slender, straight, dark brows met in a slight frown.

“Miss Rodney, you must not excite yourself. I cannot answer for the consequences if you do,” he said.

“I am not excited, I am quite calm; but I want mamma. Will you not bring her to me?” she pleaded.

He laid his warm, strong hand gently for a moment on the dimpled little white ones that lay outside the silken counterpane.

“My child, I am very sorry, but--I cannot,” he answered, slowly.

She tore her small hand violently from his clasp, and looked at him with the dignity of a suddenly awakened womanhood flashing into her fair young face.

“Mr. Delaney, surely I have misunderstood you,” she said. “You do not mean that you will let me lie here suffering, dying, and refuse to bring my friends to me?”

“Dying? Oh, no, it is not so bad as that,” he said, almost shudderingly. “You have only a flesh wound, Miss Rodney. With patience on your part, and good nursing from Mrs. Griffin, here, you will be quite sure to recover.”

“And in the meantime?” she asked, with a wistful meaning in her voice that he could not affect to misunderstand.

He turned his head aside, disconcerted, perhaps, by the steady gaze of the blue eyes.

“In the meantime, Mr. Delaney?” she repeated, in a slightly raised voice.

He turned toward her again, and answered, abruptly, almost sternly:

“I hope they will not be seriously alarmed about you, Miss Rodney, for it is quite impossible for me to make any communication to them regarding your whereabouts.”