CHAPTER XII Hildegarde had acquired the habit of stepping softly as she went about her father's house; of stopping to listen before she turned corners or entered rooms. Every activity of the house she scrutinized with suspicion. She felt that affairs went forward there under the surface which she could only guess at but could not detect. There was a sort of melodrama about her situation that keyed her up. She would never admit it, but, nevertheless, there were times when she really enjoyed herself. There was no air of mystery about the place, but she knew mystery was there. She knew there were servants waiting upon her who were set there to keep watchful eyes upon her father; perhaps they carried on at the same time other and more sinister occupations. Her father seemed to go about his usual pursuits without interruption, but she believed there were interruptions. Every time a fire worked its destruction, every time the papers reported the havoc of an explosion, she wondered if her father's hand had been in it. But she saw nothing to evidence his guilt. Simply and baldly, she saw nothing. She only felt. Ever since that night of climaxes she had hoped to discover the identity of the man who had forced her father, not against his honorable scruples, but against his fears, to assume a part in Germany's secret war against the United States, but his identity was never hinted at by anything that came to her ears or eyes. Once, on some pretext, she had rummaged the basements of the house to see if she could find the explosives whose presence had been hinted at. She found nothing. She listened for and searched for things she did not want to find. "If I should find something," she asked herself, "what would I do about it?" There was a problem indeed. One may despise a parent, but, nevertheless, parenthood exists. She loved the memory of her mother, and Herman von Essen had dominated her mother's life. Possibly her mother had loved him. Surely she had loved him for an interval. Considerations of this sort reared themselves; but perhaps the major consideration was her horror of disgrace--her horror of being shown to the world as the daughter of a man guilty of treachery toward his country. Perhaps she was not the only daughter of German parentage who faced such a problem in those days.