“I do not wish to be hard upon you, child. It is my fatherly regard for your welfare that urges me to sternness. It seems as if you have not the faintest idea of my meaning.” “I am ashamed to confess that I have not, papa. It is all owing to my own stupidity that I fail to understand you,” she said, with wondrous gentleness. He made a despairing gesture. “I am sure I do not know how to make you understand,” he said, “I am sure I wish I did not need to try. Unfortunately, it becomes my duty. Remember that, Aline.” “Yes, papa.” He stroked his rippling brown beard nervously with his long, white fingers. How hard it was to show the evil nature of the world to this simple-hearted child! He said to himself, passionately, that he would almost rather cut off his right hand than be obliged to do it. “When I said other people, Aline, I meant the world in general, and the people of Chester--the people among whom you live in particular,” he began. She bowed her dark head gravely. She did not in the least know what to say. His remarks appeared quite irrelevant in her eyes. “You have some friends among them. You like them, they like you,” he said. “Oh, yes,” she answered with a smile, and he continued, desperately: “When they hear that you have come home, Aline, and that you refuse to reveal where and with whom you have been, they will suspect that your strange silence hides some disgraceful mystery. They will refuse to associate with you; they will point the finger of scorn at you.” CHAPTER XXIII. Mr. Rodney paused when he had uttered those words and looked gravely at his daughter. She had not quite taken in his meaning yet. She was looking at him with an air of blended surprise and incredulity. “Papa, you must please excuse me for repeating your words over this time,” she said, anxiously. “You see I want to be sure that I understand you. Do you say that people will suspect _me_ of something disgraceful?--that they will have nothing to do with _me_?--that they will point the finger of scorn at _me_?” “That was what I said, Aline,” he replied. The blue eyes turned inquiringly to her mother’s face. “Is it really true, mamma, or is papa only teasing me?” she asked, slowly. “I am afraid it is only too true, my dear,” Mrs. Rodney answered, with a great, strangling sob. A look of horror came into the great blue eyes. “But, mamma”--she unconsciously turned from her father’s pale, stern face to her mother’s gentler one--“I have done nothing wrong. Why should my friends treat me so?” Mrs. Rodney could not answer her. She looked at her husband. “Aline,” he said, “do you remember when you were a little girl at school, the first line you used to write in your copy-book?” “Yes, papa,” she replied, with a half-smile on her red lips. “It was this, ‘Avoid the appearance of evil.’” “Exactly. Well, it is a maxim that goes with us through life. We should not only avoid evil, but even the appearance of it. Do you understand me, Aline?”