“Went away again,” repeated Mr. Rodney, with white lips. “Where did she go?” “Where should she go but to her home?” queried Oran Delaney, in amaze. “Where, indeed?” echoed the distracted father. “You might better ask yourself that question, Oran Delaney! You who have ruined her young life, might know better how to answer it!” “Come with me, Mr. Rodney. We have much to say to each other,” said Oran Delaney. He led his uninvited guest up to the quiet library where but a little while ago Aline had stood, asking him to save her ruined life by making her his wife. It was the father now instead of the daughter--quite a difference, Oran Delaney said to himself, with grim pleasantry. He placed a chair for Mr. Rodney, but the latter declined it and stood up stiffly, with his arms folded over his breast. Their glances met, and Mr. Delaney saw bitter hatred in the dark-blue eyes whose likeness to Aline’s struck him with a strange pain. “You have come to curse me, Mr. Rodney,” he said, drawing a long, deep breath. “I have come to do more than that,” the man answered, passionately. “I have come to demand reparation for my daughter’s wrongs!” CHAPTER L. It was exactly what Oran Delaney was prepared to hear. Nay, he would have been disappointed if the proud, noble looking man before him had not made that passionate, determined assertion. He said to himself that, if he had been the father of Aline Rodney, he would have killed any man who had thus shadowed her life. He knew that he had a true man and a devoted father to deal with, and the groan that struggled up from his breast was not one of fear, but rather of grief that he could not make the reparation demanded. “Let me ask you one question, Mr. Rodney,” he said. “Who has betrayed Aline’s secret to you?” Mr. Rodney looked at him steadily, as he answered: “I have no objection to telling you, sir. It was a New York detective, who has been upon Aline’s track ever since her first disappearance from her home.” “How has he discovered it?” Mr. Delaney exclaimed, while a terrible pallor overspread his face. He knew what those keen New York detectives were. Was all his humiliating secret, indeed, revealed to the carping world? “I cannot tell you that,” Mr. Rodney answered. “It is the man’s own secret. Suffice it to say that I am now fully aware that Aline spent the three months of her strange absence under this roof. You will not deny that fact?” “Would to God that I could!” groaned Oran Delaney, involuntarily. “Ah! you are frightened at the consequences of what you have done!” sneered the outraged father. It he had expected to arouse a tempest of wrath in the other by his contemptuous sneer, he was mistaken. Mr. Delaney looked at him gravely, even sadly, but he made no answer to the angry words, His heart and mind were in a tumult. He could not think clearly. Aline’s beautiful, anguished face kept rising between him and her father. It haunted him, he could not banish it from his thoughts.