He walked away from her, and went over to the window that overlooked Delaney House and its beautiful spacious grounds. Drawing aside the curtain, he looked out upon the scene. The winter snow was falling in soft, thick flakes, and had been falling thus all day. The ground was covered with a soft, white carpet, pure and unspotted, for no footfall had smirched its virgin purity. Through the veil of softly falling flakes the gloomy gray outline of Delaney House glimmered indistinctly like a picture. To his wretched, distracted mind, filled with harrowing suspicions of his child, recurred a line or two from a familiar poem: “Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell-- Fell, like the snow-flakes, from heaven to hell!” A groan forced itself through his pale, drawn lips. “My God!” he said, hoarsely. “Only to think, Aline, that while we were distracted over your unknown fate, while we sought you everywhere, while sleep was a stranger to our eyes and food tasted bitter on our lips, through the terrible strain of our anxiety for you, that you were hidden away in my neighbor’s house, within a stone’s throw of your own home! It was wicked, cruel, heartless!” “Heartless!” she echoed, with weary bitterness, and a look of agony came over the white face. She recalled that time so well when she had sorrowed to feel what they would think of her at home; how they would miss her and grieve for her, blaming her for the terrible silence she was forced to keep. “Aline, will you tell me one thing?” he asked. “I suppose it cannot greatly matter in the keeping of your secret. I am most curious to know how you left your room that day.” “I went through that window, papa,” she answered, thinking that she might tell him the truth thus far, at least. “But how?” he inquired, in palpable astonishment. “Down a ladder,” she replied. “Placed there by Oran Delaney?” he inquired, smothering a terrible imprecation on his writhing lips. “Yes, papa,” she answered, wearily, for she was weak and tired, and in his excitement he had not thought of sparing her feeble strength. “So then there was really an intrigue carried on between you?” he burst out, wrathfully. “No, papa, there was not. I had never spoken to Mr. Delaney in my life until that day,” she replied, with such candor that he could not but believe her. “How then did it happen that you allowed him to place a ladder for you to descend upon?” he asked. The pale face grew suddenly scarlet again. “Papa, it was the fault of my own willfulness,” she sighed. “I told you so, Aline. I always knew that your willful ways would bring you into trouble,” cried poor, half-dazed Mrs. Rodney. “Yes, mamma, dearest, and your words came true--as true as any words ever spoken in this world,” cried Aline, meekly; and she added, with a long, heavy sigh, “I do not believe any one ever paid a greater price for an innocent folly than I have done.”