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SWORN TO SILENCE
or, ALINE RODNEY’S SECRET.
By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.
[Illustration: THE SWEETHEART SERIES
GEORGE
MUNRO’S
SONS,
PUBLISHERS.
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STREET,
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Copyright, 1898, by George Munro’s Sons.
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FERD. T. HOPKINS, Proprietor, 37 Great Jones Street, New York
Sworn to Silence;
or,
ALINE RODNEY’S SECRET.
By MRS. ALEX McVEIGH MILLER.
[Illustration]
Copyright 1883, by George Munro.
[Illustration]
(SWEETHEART)
NEW YORK:
GEORGE MUNRO’S SONS, PUBLISHERS,
17 to 27 Vanderwater Street.
[Illustration:
FOR THE WOMAN OF FASHION
À LA SPIRITE
=C/B= CORSETS
STRAIGHT FRONT MODELS
]
THE MOTHER’S MISSION.
[Illustration: 1840
MRS. WINSLOW’S
For
Children
While
Teething
SOOTHING SYRUP
1907
]
A great Emperor once asked one of his noble subjects what would secure
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USE MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP.
Guaranteed under the Food and Drugs Act, June 30th, 1906. Serial
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FOR OVER SIXTY YEARS
An Old and Well-Tried Remedy
=MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP= has been used for over =SIXTY= YEARS
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Twenty-Five Cents a Bottle.
SWORN TO SILENCE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER L.
CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER LIII.
CHAPTER LIV.
CHAPTER LV.
CHAPTER LVI.
CHAPTER LVII.
CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LXI.
CHAPTER LXII.
CHAPTER LXIII.
CHAPTER LXIV.
CHAPTER LXV.
CHAPTER LXVI.
CHAPTER LXVII.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
CHAPTER LXIX.
CHAPTER I.
“Fair roses from far countries
Around my portals twine;
Bright on their radiant faces
Caressing sunbeams shine,
But my neighbor over yonder
Has a fairer rose than mine.
“I see his dainty cottage
Beyond my garden bowers,
High o’er it, tall and stately,
My shadowing mansion towers;
But my neighbor’s Rose of roses
Is sweeter than my flowers.”
The family carriage of the Rodneys stood before the gate, and Mouse and
Kitty, the two sleek gray ponies, champed their bits impatiently while
the Rodneys, great and small, issued forth in gala attire.
They were going to the picnic in Walnut Grove--mamma, papa, Effie, and
little Max--all but Aline, and _she_ was in disgrace and forbidden to
go. (Not that the command itself would have been sufficient to detain
her, but she was locked into her room, “in durance vile,” and left in
charge of the cook for safe-keeping.)
Aline was usually in disgrace with the family. She had the sweetest
face and the warmest heart in the world, but with her high spirits
and willful ways she had a most lamentable faculty for getting into
mischief of some sort daily, and it was for some more flagrant offense
than usual that mamma had sternly vetoed the picnic to-day and locked
her into her room to meditate on her many and grievous faults.
The culprit, from her upper window, flattened her pretty piquant little
nose against the window-pane and gazed after the departing quartet with
great sparkling tears in the lovely eyes whose rare and peculiar shade
of deep purple-blue had been caught from the far-off strain of Irish
blood that flowed in her veins. They were “sweetest eyes were ever
seen,” at once arch and tender and shaded by long, black-fringed lashes
overarched by--
“Slender brows of shining jet,
Limned against the forehead’s snow,
Like triumphal arches set
O’er the conquering eyes below.”
The Rodneys entered the carriage, and Aline flung them one last
despairing kiss from the tips of her slim white fingers, but no one
saw except, perhaps, her little brother, who looked up regretfully
and saw the lovely, girlish face smiling at him through its sparkling
tears. Then the carriage door was closed, Mouse and Kitty broke into a
sedate trot, and the sweet face retired from the window and hid itself
in a small square of snowy linen. Aline’s heart was for the moment
completely broken.
It was no small trial to be shut up in that hot, stifling little
chamber all that lovely, sunny July day. She thought of the beautiful
green grove close by the shining river, with the light winds ruffling
its cool breast, of the happy gathering of young people, the games,
the dancing, the hamper baskets of cold chicken and sweetmeats,
indigestible pickles and pies and cakes, prepared for the gay,
unceremonious dinner, and her heart sunk heavily. She would not
willingly have foregone the delights of that day for anything she
possessed. Any other punishment she could have borne with equanimity,
but it did seem as if mamma had been actuated by malice prepense in
forbidding the picnic to which Aline had looked forward eagerly for two
long weeks.
She wept some bitter tears, distinctly tinctured with anger, into her
snowy handkerchief, then she wiped her eyes and looked about her for
some means of passing the tedious time away. Her mother had brought her
up a volume of sermons, by way of profitable reading. Aline vented her
spite and disappointment most unjustifiably on the unoffending volume,
by tossing it out of the little end window into her neighbor’s garden,
and the innocent missile, in its rapid descent, hit her neighbor
sharply upon the head.
When she saw what she had done, a little cry of dismay broke from
her lips. The great gray stone mansion standing in the beautiful
garden next door to Mr. Rodney’s cottage was known throughout the
little village of Chester as a haunted house; and its owner, the
dark, moody-looking man who had just returned from a protracted
sojourn abroad, was generally considered a very mysterious man. He was
immensely rich, a bachelor, and handsome in a dark, corsair-like style
that the girls of Chester considered very fascinating although it was
so inaccessible.
As for the gentleman himself he neither knew nor cared what the good
villagers thought of him. He was among them, but not of them. He sought
no society and received no guests. He dwelt alone and lonely in the
grand old mansion where several generations of his ancestors had lived
and died, and which popular imagination peopled with ghosts. Indeed, it
was positively asserted that at the dread midnight hour shrieks of woe
had been heard to issue from the deserted house, and lights had been
seen flashing from window to window as if waved in phantom hands. The
Delaneys had been a hard, proud, cruel race, so said Mme. Rumor, that
knowing dame, and it was no wonder if some of them returned to earth in
spirit to bewail the deeds done in the flesh.
The humbler home of the Rodneys, a simple two-storied cottage, stood
next the gloomy gray stone mansion, and the small end window of Aline’s
little room overlooked the beautiful garden where the taciturn,
grave-browed master strolled at will, and smoked his choice Havanas
and switched off the heads of his splendid roses and lilies with his
slender ebony cane as if hating all things beautiful and sweet.
Many a time and oft Aline had watched this strange, mysterious unknown
neighbor of theirs through a crevice in the white curtain, and
speculated curiously over his history, while she inwardly deprecated
the fact that those splendid flowers belonged to such a monster.
“The cruel wretch! To snap off their heads with his ugly stick! I
should like to knock _his_ head off!” Aline often muttered indignantly
to herself, and lo! now in her eagerness to place the obnoxious book
forever beyond her mother’s reach, she had almost compassed her wish.
She saw the tall, straight figure reel a moment under the suddenness
of the blow, saw him put his white hand quickly to his head, where a
sharp corner of the book had inadvertently struck it. In her terror
and dismay she uttered a little cry of alarm and regret. He looked up
quickly at the sound--so quickly that she could not retreat.
As he looked up he saw the sweetest girl face he had ever beheld in
his life--beautiful even through its frightened pallor--with startled,
wide-open blue eyes, the long black lashes curled upward, giving them
an expression of almost infantine innocence and purity. The delicate
oval of the lovely face was daintily broken by a deep dimple in the
rounded chin, the parted red lips disclosed teeth like pearls, and the
dark, silken hair, worn in short, babyish rings on the round, white
forehead, fell over her shoulders in long, loose, natural ringlets to
the slender, rounded waist. Framed in the small, white-draped window,
with a vine of his own rare clematis clambering up from his garden and
twining luxuriantly about the casement, she looked like some beautiful
picture--a picture that Oran Delaney carried in his heart to his dying
day, “unforgotten in every charm.”
For her, she looked down into the dark, wondering eyes of her
mysterious neighbor, and set her little teeth and held her ground
bravely, determined not to fly from his wrath. Some confused,
remorseful dread of mamma’s and Effie’s anger at this new scrape
flashed into her mind momentarily; poor mamma, who thought that for
this one day, at least, she had secured her willful, thoughtless
darling from the commission of the smallest bit of mischief--and she
determined to make a treaty of peace with this _bête noir_ of hers, in
order to secure his silence, little dreaming that with this culminating
act of folly the story of her life would begin.
Aline was ordinarily a brave girl, but she was honestly frightened now
at what she had done. Oran Delaney was an ogre in her eyes, and her
youthful imagination, fired by the descriptions she had heard of him,
recoiled in dismay at the thought of his wrath. Of course he would
suppose that she had hurled the book at his head on purpose. His anger
would be something fearful, she did not doubt. Would he report her
conduct to her parents? She resolved frantically that, at all odds, he
should not do that. She could not endure it.