“You dear, curious old papa, I shan’t tell you!” replied Aline, with her merry laugh that sounded like music. “You are jesting, Aline, but it is not an appropriate subject for a joke,” said her father. “Come, dear, I do not like to be kept in suspense. I am waiting to hear why you ran away from us, and where you went.” She lifted her head from his arm, and looked up into his face with her bright, wide-open eyes. She saw that he was not jesting, that he was in intense earnest. She was inclined to resent his curiosity, as she termed it to herself. “Really, papa, I cannot imagine why you make such a fuss over it,” she cried, with all the freedom of a spoiled child. “I should think you already knew why I went away. It was because I didn’t wish to stay in that hot, stuffy little chamber all day while you were enjoying yourselves at the picnic. So I went out for a little while, I meant to return directly, but--” she stopped short, and a sudden flush mounted up to her white forehead. “And why did you not return, Aline?” her mother cried out, quickly. “What reasons did you have for staying?” “I had the very strongest of reasons, mamma,” said the girl, and now they saw that she was half laughing, half crying. “The very strongest reasons, for I could not return.” “But why, dear?” asked Effie, leaning on her lover’s arm, and looking deeply interested. “Ah, ‘why, why’!--how you all do ring the changes on that one word,” cried Aline, in pretty petulance. “When I say that I do not mean to tell you, why cannot you leave me alone?” She was in the most palpable earnest. They all saw that. They did not know what to say to her. She was so childlike, so innocent, she could not understand why it was really so necessary that she should explain her absence to them. “Tell me one thing, Aline, my darling,” said her father, coaxingly. “How did you get out of your locked room?” She locked her white hands around his arm and looked up into his face. There was a deep, warm color on her face, and her eyes were misty as if with tears that she bravely held back. “Papa, darling,” she said, with a sudden quiver in her fresh young voice, “do not be angry with me, dear. Indeed, indeed, I do not want to be naughty or willful or unkind to you. But I cannot tell you how I left my room that day any more than I can tell you how I came back to you to-night.” There was a dead silence. Aline did not know how strangely her words sounded to them all. She did not know that there was anything so strange and reprehensible in her silence. She did not realize that she was no longer a child, but a woman, every day of whose life should lie fair and open like a spotless page to every eye. Her father put her suddenly out of his arms into a chair by his side. “Aline, you are tired to-night. Perhaps you will tell us your story to-morrow?” he said, half inquiringly.