“And you, mamma?” she inquired, turning her wistful eyes upon Mrs. Rodney’s pale and altered face. “I am quite willing, dear,” she replied. “You are too good and kind to me, papa and mamma; I do not deserve it. I must not let you make such a sacrifice for my sake!” she cried. “There is too much at stake to call it a sacrifice,” Mr. Rodney answered. “At least we need not make it yet,” Aline cried, musingly. “Oh, papa, I can hardly believe yet that my friends will be unkind to me, that they will believe evil of me because I am fettered by a mysterious vow. Let us make the trial. Let us give them the chance to trust me if they will. Do not let us go away just yet. Let us stay and be convinced. Perhaps the world is not so hard as you think. How could it be so unjust and cruel?” CHAPTER XXV. Mr. Rodney gazed sadly at his daughter. He saw that she could scarcely bring herself to believe that which he had told her. “I see how it is, Aline,” he said to her, gravely. “You are inclined to doubt my assertions. You do not altogether believe what I have told you.” She was shocked when he put the truth before her in so plain a fashion. She did not know herself how strong a vein of incredulity ran through her painful thoughts. “Oh, papa, forgive me,” she said, penitently. “I did not mean to doubt you. It was only my unfortunate manner of expressing myself. I was hoping against hope. Will you forgive me for my implied doubt? It is so hard to give up hope.” He only pressed her hand in silence, and she continued: “Even if they thought hardly of me, might they not in time relent? Might I not live down the scandal even if they were cruel enough to make a scandal out of nothing?” “You might in time,” he answered, “but it would be a long while first, so long that your youth and beauty would be faded, and they would forgive you because they could no longer envy you.” “So long as that?” she asked, with a heavy sigh. “Yes, dear, nothing but time will heal that wound,” he answered. She lay silently musing. She could not bear to give up the beautiful, bright world which she loved so well, and in which she had such unbounded faith and hope. It was a great temptation to her to accept the sacrifice her father proposed making. She had the innate selfishness of youth which thinks that the world was made for itself. She did not understand how great a sacrifice it was that her family would make. In her ignorance of the world, she could not know. But while she dallied with the temptation to accept it, she found herself restrained from leaving Chester by a vague, yet subtle, feeling she could not understand. It was stronger than her will, it was some influence outside of herself that she could not analyze, but it was most powerful. It drew her one way, while her reason and her will seemed both to point in a contrary direction. She yielded to it blindly, not knowing that it was fate, that “Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.”