She looked gravely at her father, who had been watching her face, anxiously noting the changing emotions of its expressive features. “Papa, my mind is made up,” she said, with almost womanly calmness. “I shall not go away. I will remain in Chester.” “Remain!” he echoed, surprised at her decision. “Yes, I will remain. I will not act a cowardly part, and run away from my trouble. I will stay here and live it down if my hair grows gray and my eyes dim in the effort.” “You will have to be very brave if you do so, Aline,” he answered, not without a certain admiration of her high spirit. “I intend to be,” she answered, with a sigh. He could not help feeling relieved at her decision. He was not a rich man. All his income was derived from his legal practice. To begin life anew in another place meant a hard struggle, although he would not have shirked it in the interest of the child he loved so fondly. But now that her own decision made it unnecessary, a burden was lifted from his mind. He bent down and pressed his lips to her fair, white brow. “God bless you, and help you, my daughter,” he said. Her lips quivered, the quick tears rushed into her eyes. She let the lids drop over them hastily, and the bright drops rolled like crushed pearls down her cheeks. “Aline, you are exhausted. I have been too thoughtless,” he said, remorsefully. “Yes, I am tired,” she answered, wearily. “I should like to go to sleep.” They kissed her, and went away softly, but Aline did not go to sleep. She lay, broad awake, in the chilly, rainy dawn of the new day, looking drearily into the future. “I have lost my life,” she said, mournfully, to herself. “For, if I live it down, I shall be old by then, and nothing but the grave will lie before me.” She recalled some verses she had read in a book at Delaney House. “Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, And when once the storm of youth is past, Without lyre, without lute, or chorus, Death, a silent pilot, comes at last.” Death! She gave a shudder in spite of herself. She had always had the keenest love of life, the greatest enjoyment of its pleasures. She was sanguine, ardent, impetuous. Even now, when she looked at Death across a bridge of sorrow, she felt a little afraid of it. She bewailed her blighted life, her irrevocable folly. She would have to pay the cost of her girlish willfulness by the sacrifice of all that was best in life. Bitterly she bewailed her fault and Oran Delaney’s hard heart, that had brought this doom upon her. “If I had known the cruel price I must pay for my silence, I would have died before I would have pledged myself to it. But Mr. Delaney must have known. He is older than I am--he knows the world. How cruel, how wicked he must be to doom me to such a fate!” she said to herself, indignantly.