Chapter LVII

“I would sooner have died than have wronged your willful, innocent child, Mr. Rodney,” he said. “When she came into the garden that day I had no thought but her pleasure. She seemed but a child to me, and I saw no harm in her going into Delaney House with me to share my lunch. I had been so long secluded from the world that I did not remember its hard rules. I was pleased with the beautiful, happy girl, and I thought that her people had treated her unfairly, in leaving her at home, while they went away to enjoy themselves. In a languid, careless way I allowed her to enjoy herself. It seemed very easy to her to do so.”

“She had a sunny, happy temper when all went well with her,” said Mr. Rodney, with a heavy sigh to the memory of his self-exiled daughter.

“Yes, I thought so,” said Oran Delaney, echoing the sigh. “I saw that she was willful and a trifle wild, but I thought nothing of it. She was too young and fair to be worldly-wise. Poor child, would that she had been! She had never then entered the fatal portals of Delaney House.”

“Fatal indeed!” groaned the afflicted father.

“I blame myself that I let her enter there,” said Oran Delaney. “The child must have charmed me, for I forgot my usual prudence and allowed myself to be pleased in her happiness. She ate her lunch with me, then, frightened at the flight of time, left me and ran out into the hall to go home. It was then that the accident happened to her.”

Mr. Rodney listened with painful interest.

“While she was going though the hall,” continued Mr. Delaney, “a series of horrible shrieks saluted our ears from the upper hall. Horrified at my carelessness I bade Aline fly home, and I rushed up the stairs to confront the dangerous maniac. I met her in the upper hall, arrayed in all the splendor of her wedding-robes, with a flashing dagger in her hand and fury flashing from her eyes. She rushed at me with a murderous shriek, and before I could disarm her she had thrust the keen point of her dagger into the fleshy part of my arm. The keen pain threw me off my guard a moment, and in that moment the would-be murderess escaped me and flew down the stairs. Heedless of my wounded arm, I followed her, but was just one minute too late. Just as I reached her, she had pursued Aline through the deserted parlor, and the poor girl fell across the threshold wounded in the breast by the maniac’s dagger. I came up to them just in time to arrest the second descent of the blade. Mrs. Griffin came to my assistance, and together we disarmed Julie, and locked her into her room again.”

He paused, drew a heavy sigh, and then continued:

“Then my folly and selfishness began. I knew that I ought at once to apprise Aline’s parents of her accident, and yet I also knew that to do so must be to disclose the hidden secret of my deformed and maniac bride to the world. My morbid self-consciousness shrunk from it. I felt that I could not endure the ordeal. Hastily, and without counting the cost to the victim of Julie’s dreadful mania, I decided upon my course. I removed Aline to a comfortable chamber, and Mrs. Griffin attended upon her faithfully. I went to Maywood and brought Doctor Anthony to see her. He did not consider the wound dangerous, so I did not have him renew the visit. I considered it too hazardous to my secret. You may well look at me reproachfully, Mr. Rodney. I can understand now how culpably I acted, but then my conscience was deadened within me by my sensitive horror of the world’s finding out my bitter secret.”

Mr. Rodney had no words to answer him. He sat listening in painful silence.

“Aline was very angry, when she recovered consciousness and found that I was determined not to apprise her parents of her situation. I told her that she should never leave Delaney House until she swore solemnly never to divulge the secret of her whereabouts and the manner in which she came by her wound. She refused in the bitterest terms at first, declaring that she would never keep the secret from her parents. I told her that she should never even see them again until she obeyed my dictation.”

“My poor girl!” sighed Aline’s father.

“I was hard and cruel; I recognize it now, although I did not then comprehend the enormity of what I was doing,” said Oran Delaney. “Aline was bitterly angry. She declared that she would never submit to such injustice; and she worked herself up into such a state that she became dangerously ill. There were six weeks when we nursed her night and day, scarcely believing that she would live from one day to another.”

“And yet you would not let us know! I do not believe that I can ever forgive you,” cried Mr. Rodney.

“I can never forgive myself,” Mr. Delaney answered, sadly. “But I was willfully blind; I never once realized the full enormity of my offense against you and your daughter--my selfish misery made me desperate. I was agonized by her sufferings, but I never once relented. When she at length convalesced and renewed her entreaties to go home, I steadily refused to allow her to do so until she had bound herself to solemn silence. She was as obdurate as I was, at first. She affirmed that she would never do so. But, at the end of three months, her girlish patience gave way, and, in her anxiety to see her dear ones again, she weakened and solemnly bound herself to all that I asked her. Then, after telling me, in a gush of girlish passion, that she hated me, she went home.”

He paused, and there was a deep silence in the room. He was thinking of the night when the graceful young figure had flitted out from the doors of Delaney House, leaving it darker and more gloomy than ever. He recalled the last moment of her stay, when, with her small hand clinched in bitter, impotent wrath, she had said, scathingly:

“I hate you, Oran Delaney, for all that you have made me suffer!”

The words had pierced his heart like a sword point. They had remained with him ever since, growing harder to bear day by day. He could not bear that those frank blue eyes should rest on him with hate and scorn. It was like a wound in his heart.