She closed her eyes and lay musing on those perplexing questions. Her thoughts went back to the days she had spent at Delaney House, and to the horrible mysterious Thing that had so terribly assaulted and wounded her. She wondered, as she had often done before, what that creature was to Oran Delaney. Why did he shut himself up alone in that great gloomy house with such a terrible companion for his solitude? She shuddered at the thought of it--the ghost of Delaney House as he had called it. The remembrance of those awful, maniacal shrieks rung in her hearing often, and often, chilling the bounding life-blood in her young veins. “Perhaps it will kill Mr. Delaney some day,” she said, to herself, and she shuddered at the thought. Death seemed a terrible thing to this fair young girl in whose veins the tide of life flowed so strong and free. She dreaded the cruel grave, its darkness, its nothingness, its gloom. The sudden opening of the door roused her from the gloomy musings that began to steal over her. Mr. Rodney entered abruptly. Aline turned her head with a smile toward her father, but the gentle beam faded from her lips, and a cry of terror broke from her at sight of his face. He was pale to ghastliness, his blue eyes seemed to almost emit sparks of fire, so angrily did they blaze upon her. His face was almost contorted with the strong agitation that possessed him. Aline half started up, filled with a blind terror. “Papa!” she gasped. He caught her roughly by the shoulder and shook her so fiercely that she fell back in her chair, hiding her white face fearfully in her hands. He looked as if he were about to kill her as she crouched in her chair, with her face hidden from his wrathful gaze, while she trembled like a leaf in a storm. Mrs. Rodney sprung up and ran hurriedly to him. She caught his arm in both her delicate white hands. “Oh, Mr. Rodney, pray do not be so rough with Aline! You will kill her!” she cried. He shook her off rudely almost as he had shaken his daughter. Indeed, he was so strongly agitated, that he did not seem to know the extent of his violence. “Better for her if she were dead!” he broke out, bitterly. “Better for us if she never had been born!” “Oh, papa, what have I done?” Aline wailed out, frightened by his fierce denunciations. “Done! What have you not done?” he stormed at her, fiercely. “Oh, wretched, shameless girl, whom I have nurtured at my fireside and in my heart! How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have such a child! Would to God you had perished yesterday rather than live for me to tell you your shame to-day!” “Shame!” the girl broke out with sudden passion and violence, while the deep color flooded her exquisite face with crimson. “Do not apply that word to me, papa! I have done nothing, nothing!” “What can you mean?” gasped Mrs. Rodney, growing as pale as her daughter. He glared at them fiercely, his handsome face disfigured by passion.