The strange and perfectly unaccountable manner of Aline Rodney’s disappearance from her home had excited a great sensation in the town of Chester. Such a harrowing mystery had never before agitated the pretty little country town. Mr. Rodney, Aline’s father, was the only lawyer the town could boast, and although not wealthy, was a prominent member of society in Chester. His two pretty daughters had been educated as carefully as his means would allow, and were the boast of the town for their beauty. Effie Rodney was a hazel-eyed beauty, with soft waving tresses of chestnut brown and a complexion of the loveliest red and white, combined with features of the purest Grecian type. She was twenty-three years old, and so stately, quiet, and dignified, that her more volatile sister, Aline, audaciously dubbed her an old maid. Mrs. Rodney was a pretty woman of the same type of beauty as Effie. Mother and daughter were remarkably alike, both being tall, extremely graceful in appearance, and very dignified in manner. To both of them the wild and willful ways of blue eyed Aline were a perpetual wonder and annoyance. They loved her, but she was a sore trial to their patience, and their understanding. She was so gay, so willful, so thoughtless, that, as Mrs. Rodney expressed it, she kept her family “in hot water all the while.” They could never tell what mischievous prank their pretty Aline would be into next. Never were two sisters more unlike than Aline and Effie, both in mind and looks, although they were really fond of each other. Both were beautiful, but one was like a stately, bright-plumaged bird-of-paradise, the other like a brilliant humming-bird, always on the wing, never at rest in its aerial flight. Neither Mrs. Rodney nor Effie could understand Aline’s complex character. She was wild and willful, but she was also warm-hearted and loving. She was always getting herself into some kind of mischief, always being blamed by mamma, and lectured by Effie. If papa had not petted her and Max adored her she could not have stood it. But the forces for and against being very equally divided she was enabled to hold her own with tolerable equanimity. Sometimes, mamma, acting upon a mistaken sense of duty, allotted to Aline some quite severe punishments, as in the case of the imprisonment the day of the picnic; but there was always papa to pet and soothe his injured little girl, Max to load her with sugar-plums, and even stately Effie to lament that her darling little sister had to be punished. So Aline, with all the faults of her head and heart, was dearly beloved and bitterly missed and mourned in the home from which she had so strangely dropped out like a link from a golden chain.