Her frank and thoughtless admission had let in such a flood of light upon his mind as would have frightened Aline indeed could she only have known it. “I have never been away from Chester in my life,” she had said, and the words rung in his hearing long after her fair, bewildering face had vanished from his sight. If this were true, and Mr. Lane did not in the least doubt the assertion, what became of Dr. Anthony’s romantic story? The place where Dr. Anthony had been called to attend the mysteriously wounded girl must have been about five miles from Maywood, declared the physician. “Chester is five miles distant from Maywood.” Mr. Lane repeated these words to himself, and his face began to burn and his heart to thump against his vest pocket. He seized his hat and went out into the night air to cool his glowing face. Out under the cold, wintery sky, with its host of gleaming stars, he mentally shook himself. “I have been a stupid dolt, a stark, staring idiot,” he cried, vehemently. “I shall never pride myself on my skill and acumen again. Only to think that I never reflected on that plain fact that Chester is five miles from Maywood. The girl has never been out of Chester, and oh, what a consummate stupid I have been.” He was angry with himself, indeed. He accused himself of the most inexcusable stupidity. Only to think how he had scoured the country for miles around Maywood and never thought of Chester. It was the most natural mistake in the world, but he was bitterly angry with himself for having made it. He walked along the pavement in front of the cottage, so absorbed in thought that he scarcely heeded the cold winter wind that sighed among the leafless trees and around the gables of the cottage. With the sight of Aline’s beautiful, innocent face had come an even deeper desire to fathom the secret of that strange absence. “I will find it out this time; but will she thank me for it? Will any one thank me?” he asked himself, soberly, and he decided that it could not hurt Aline Rodney to have the truth revealed. He did not believe that any willful guilt could hide behind that smooth, white brow and those clear, true eyes. “She would undoubtedly reveal it herself but for the vow of silence that binds her,” he said to himself. “I may even be doing her a favor by tracing out the secret and revealing it to her parents. Anyhow, I shall make it convenient to remain down here a week or two, and ‘we shall see what we shall see.’”