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.” CHAPTER VI. A cry of reproach, astonishment, and dismay came from Aline’s lips. “You will not be so cruel,” she cried. “What have I done to you that you should punish me so?” “I do not mean to punish you, Miss Rodney. On the contrary, I am exceedingly sorry that I cannot grant your wish,” he said. “But there are reasons--” he paused abruptly, and did not finish the sentence. “Strange reasons they must be that can keep a mother from the side of her suffering child,” cried Aline, with all the harshness of a young girl’s judgment. A heavy sigh breathed over Oran Delaney’s lips. His dark eyes turned to hers with more sadness than sternness in their gloomy depths.