But, after all, she had been sorry to punish her bright Aline so hardly. She thought about it at the picnic. It rather damped her pleasure in the gay and festive scene. She told herself that if Aline was brought to a proper state of submission she would make it up to her. She had kept the girl back somewhat, deeming her childish and unformed. She would lengthen her dresses now, put up her careless, girlish ringlets, and let her take her place in Chester society as a grown-up young lady. Perhaps the importance of the change might thrust dignity, as it were, upon the willful girl. She confided her plans to Effie when she could get her away for a moment from the knot of admirers who always surrounded the pretty Miss Rodney. Effie coincided with her mother. She was too secure in the consciousness of her own beauty to be jealous of her younger sister’s charms, and she thought that it was quite time for Aline to give over childish ways. So they went home sorry for Aline’s long day of confinement, and full of kindly intentions toward her, eager to hear of her repentance, and to give her the kiss of pardon; and they found her place vacant, her chair empty. They were full of incredulous dismay at first. They thought it must be one of her practical jokes, and that she would return to them presently full of glee over the fright she had given them, and eager to hear how they had passed the day from whose pleasures she had been ruthlessly debarred. In the meantime, they were full of wonder over the way in which the runaway had escaped from her room. The little chamber formed a small wing of itself on the left side of the cottage. It had three windows, one of which looked down upon the front of the street, another into the small, brick-paved back yard, and the third into the beautiful, neglected garden of Delaney House. It was quite impossible, they thought, that Aline could have escaped through either of these second-story windows unless she had made a rope from the sheets of her bed. But the downy little nest where Aline rested her fair form nightly was undisturbed in its snowy order. She had certainly not escaped that way, but had gone through the door, and the Rodneys were fain at first to accuse the woman whom they had left in charge of connivance at her freedom. Cook denied the accusation sturdily, and, having a good reputation for veracity, no one presumed to doubt her vehement asseverations. The mystery thickened. They discussed the possibility of Aline having a skeleton-key to the door, and inclined to that belief. In no other way could they account for her absence. Night fell; and now, indeed, they began to grow alarmed. Aline was known to be an arrant little coward in the dark. Her little feet would have carried her flying homeward long before night overtook her. “She has gone to some of the neighbors,” Mrs. Rodney suggested, and her husband and little Max set out to see.