Richard Leith went down to his office, and threw himself heavily into a chair, bowing his gray head dejectedly on his hands.
His brain was almost crazed with the agony of the last hour's discovery.
The sealed book of the past had been roughly torn open again, and in agony of soul he repented the selfish course he had pursued with the fair, young wife he had stolen from her home and friends.
Where was she now, his beautiful, golden-haired darling?
What fate had kept her from her home and friends, and from the little child that had come to such bitter grief in the absence of the mother-love that might have shielded her from harm?
He sprang from his chair, and paced impatiently up and down the floor, while he hurriedly settled his plans. He would leave for the south that night.
He would seek out John Glenalvan, and charge him with his sin.
He would force him to unfold the mystery of little Golden's disappearance. Perhaps, oh, God, the villain had murdered her.
If he had, he should suffer the dire punishment the law meted out for such wretched criminals.
"But before I go," he said to himself, grimly, "I will go and see Desmond. If he has lied to me heretofore, woe be unto him. The base betrayer of my poor child's innocence shall receive no mercy at my hands."
He threw on his hat and directed his steps to the hotel where Mr. Desmond was staying in preference to the grand, deserted dwelling, which was closed and left in the solitary care of the housekeeper during the absence of the family.
Mr. Desmond was smoking in his luxurious parlor, carelessly habited in dressing-gown and slippers.
His handsome, debonair face looked pale and worn, and melancholy. A hopeful gleam came into the listless eyes as his visitor was admitted.
"Ah, Leith, so glad to see you," he cried, throwing away his cigar, and eagerly advancing. "You bring me news—Edith has relented?"
"There is nothing more unlikely," Mr. Leith returned, with grim truthfulness; then he broke out with fiery impetuosity: "Desmond, for God's sake tell me the truth. Have you deceived me as well as your wife? Are you guilty of this monstrous sin?"
Mr. Desmond was startled by the almost agonizing entreaty of the lawyer's look and voice.
On the impulse of the moment he caught up a small Bible that lay upon a table close at hand, and pressed his lips upon it while he exclaimed in the deep, convincing tones of truth:
"Leith, I solemnly swear to you that I am innocent of the crime laid to my charge, so help me God."
Something in the man's deep earnestness, and in his look ofsuffering, staggered Richard Leith's doubts and fears, and made him feel that he had been a brute to doubt his daughter's agonized declarations of innocence. He exclaimed with sudden fervor and earnestness:
"Mr. Desmond, it is but fair to tell you that I have found the girl, Mary Smith, and that she exonerates you, too."
"I was sure she would, although she despises me," cried Mr. Desmond. "I admit that I behaved despicably to her. I tried to get up a flirtation with her, but she scorned me with the pride of a queen, and the affair went no further. I believed her as pure and cold as the snow. No one was more amazed than myself when I learned the truth through my wife's causeless jealousy."
"You say 'causeless jealousy,' Desmond," Mr. Leith remonstrated, gravely, "but you forget that ever since your marriage you have persistently wounded your loving and sensitive wife by the most open and flagrant flirtations, thus giving her the greatest cause to doubt your fidelity."
Mr. Desmond looked thoroughly ashamed and penitent at the perfectly truthful charge.
"You speak the truth, I have behaved shamefully," he replied. "But I have had my lesson now. I never knew how much I loved and honored my sweet and beautiful wife until in her righteous wrath she deserted me. But if she will believe me this time and return to me, I will never offend her again by my foolish propensities. I will never even look at another woman. I am quite cured of flirting."
He spoke so soberly and earnestly that Mr. Leith was fain to believe him, but he answered gravely:
"Your wife is so thoroughly incensed against you, that she will never believe even your sworn word without additional proof."
"But how can I prove it to her?" cried the anxious husband. "She would not believe Mary Smith's denial, and she refuses to credit mine."
"There is only one way out of the trouble," the lawyer said, gravely.
"And that?" Mr. Desmond asked, anxiously.
"Is to find out the man who is really in fault, and obtain his sworn statement," Richard Leith replied.
"The girl will give us the necessary information, of course," Mr. Desmond exclaimed, his spirits rising.
"On the contrary, she obstinately refuses to do so. She makes a most perplexing mystery of her unhappy situation."
Mr. Desmond looked uneasy and perplexed a moment, then he exclaimed, confidently:
"It is only a question of blackmail then. She will tell the truth if a golden bribe is offered her. Depend upon it, she is only waiting for that."
"You are mistaken," Richard Leith returned, gravely. "You do not understand her motives. I will tell you a harrowing secret, Desmond. I have discovered that that unfortunate girl is my own daughter!"
In a few eloquent words he told Mr. Desmond the story of hisstrange marriage, and its tragicdenouement—the lost wife, the ruined daughter.
In his own despair and agitation, it did not seem strange to the lawyer that his excitement was reflected on the face of his listener, but when he had finished his story, Desmond sprang wildly to his feet, exclaiming:
"Good God, Leith, I can lay my hand on the destroyer of your child. It is my wife's brother—it is Bertram Chesleigh!"
"Heaven, how blind I have been!" Richard Leith exclaimed, with lurid eyes, and a deathly-pale face.
There was a moment's silence, then Mr. Leith said, huskily:
"Tell me how this fact came to your knowledge, Desmond."
"Do you remember the sudden trip my wife and I took to Florida last summer?"
"Yes, I heard of it," the lawyer replied.
"I will go back a few months previous to that trip." Mr. Desmond said.
"It was this winter a year previous that Bertram Chesleigh made the acquaintance of young Frederick Glenalvan in New York and was invited by him to visit his far-away Floridian home.
"About the first of last June Bert accepted the invitation, and spent about two weeks at Glenalvan Hall.
"He wrote to my wife from there, hinting vaguely at having lost his heart to a perfect 'pearl of beauty.'
"Edith, who is excessively proud, and mortally afraid of amesalliance, replied to him coolly, discountenancing the idea and begging him not to marry out of his own state.
"Between you and me, Leith, I believe she had a great heiress booked for the young fellow in New York."
He paused for breath, but at Richard Leith's look of impatience, went on hastily:
"Bertram did not reply to his sister's letter, but in the latter part of the same month Fred Glenalvan wrote us that Bertram was lying ill with brain fever.
"We went to him at once and found him not expected to live, He was delirious, and through all his illness he called incessantly on one name. Morning, noon and night it was always, 'Golden, Golden, Golden.'"
A groan forced itself through Richard Leith's rigid lips, but he did not speak, and Mr. Desmond continued:
"That cry for Golden was always coupled with a wild appeal for forgiveness for some wrong, the nature of which we could not determine.
"My curiosity and that of my wife were powerfully excited, and we wondered who the Golden was that he called upon, and why she never came.
"It was quite evident that the Glenalvans did not care to divulge the secret, so we never presumed to ask, but whenBertram grew convalescent Edith inquired of him, and he told her the truth."
"Let me hear it," said Richard Leith, gaspingly, while the knotted veins stood out like cords on his forehead.
"It was the same story your daughter told you—that of a fair young girl kept aloof from her kind, slighted and scorned for no visible fault."
"Bertram met and loved her. They had some secret meetings by night in one of which they were discovered, and in the scene that followed, the fact was disclosed that the girl was illegitimate."
"Oh, my weakness, my sin!" groaned the wretched listener. "Curses upon John Glenalvan for his horrible villainy."
"Bertram declared that he had only entertained the most honorable feelings toward the girl," said Mr. Desmond, "but he confessed that the knowledge of her parentage so staggered him that he was induced to forsake her. He left Glenalvan Hall before daylight without seeing her again."
"The cowardly cur!" Richard Leith exclaimed, clenching his hands until the purple nails sunk into the quivering flesh.
"Hear me out," said Mr. Desmond, quickly, "before you judge him too hardly."
"I am listening," answered Richard Leith, trying to master his surging passions beneath an appearance of calmness. "I am listening, but what more can there be to say, Mr. Desmond?"
"This, Mr. Leith: Bertram went away, determined to forsake the hapless girl, but his love and remorse, and the overpowering cause of shame, urged his return so powerfully that in three days he returned to Glenalvan Hall with the full intention of marrying the girl at once, and taking her abroad with him where no one knew her unfortunate story.
"When he reached there she was gone—none knew whither. John Glenalvan told him that she had gone away with the boldly-avowed intention of leading a life of sin with her mother. Poor Bertram had suffered so much that he could not bear that crowning blow. He staggered and fell like a log at the villain's feet. A brain fever followed that nearly cost him his life."
"One more score is added to my terrible list against John Glenalvan," Richard Leith muttered darkly.
"I have no more to say," continued Mr. Desmond, "except that all the circumstances point unerringly at Bertram Chesleigh as the man who wronged your daughter."
"You are right," groaned the unhappy father. "Oh, God, if only she had remained at Glenalvan Hall that he might have made reparation for his sin!"
"Did not Bertram write to you in relation to the unfortunate affair? He mentioned an intention to do so," said Mr. Desmond.
"Only a letter so cautiously worded that I could gain no clew to the real truth," replied Richard Leith. "No names were mentioned. He only described the girl who was supposed to have entered some one of the many nameless houses in this city. He wished me to reclaim her, if possible, provide her a home, and he agreed to make her a generous allowance."
"Poor Bert," said Mr. Desmond, "and all the while she was in his sister's employ, and in reach of his hand, if he had only known it."
There was a moment's heavy silence; then Richard Leith rose hastily.
"I must go home now," he said. "I—may God forgive me—I was so maddened by my child's wrongs and my own suspicions that I refused to own her; I drove her away from her rightful home. Pray God that she be not gone. If she has, I must bring her back and tell her that I know her whole sad story, and I must make the best I can of her poor, blighted life."
"Shall you write to Bertram Chesleigh?" inquired Desmond.
"Yes, for they must know that they have wronged you, and that you are innocent," replied the lawyer. "And, Desmond, you must write to your wife. I will inclose your letter with mine, otherwise, in her pride and anger, she might return it unopened. I thank God that your fidelity is vindicated, and that your reunion is now insured."
"I have a better plan than writing to her," said Desmond, blushing like a school-girl. "I will follow your letter to her brother, and plead my cause in person. I cannot wait, Leith; I am too impatient. I long to meet my wife and child again. You will give me their address? TheEuropasails to-night. I must go with her."
Mr. Leith saw no objection to the plan. He was sorry for the impatient husband who had received a lesson that would last a life-time.
He gave him his wife's address in Italy, with his cordial good wishes and went away to seek his wronged, unhappy daughter.
"She cannot have gone yet. She was to weak and ill to have gone to-day. She would have waited until she was better," he kept whispering to his reproachful heart as he hurried along.
Then he thought of the beautiful, fashionable woman who had taken the place of little Golden's mother, and worn her name for twelve long years.
"Poor Gertrude," he murmured sadly. "I wonder how she bears it. Perhaps she will not grieve much. She does not love me as she did when I first made her my wife. Perhaps I am to blame. I have chilled her tender nature by my carelessness or coldness, for I have never loved her as I did my lost little Golden."
He hurried up the marble steps and ran impatiently along the hall, stumbling against the housekeeper, who was pacing sedately along with a little basket of keys.
As he was rushing past her she stopped and called to him.
"Mistress and her maid are gone away, sir."
"Where?" he inquired, pausing and looking back in bewildered surprise.
"I cannot tell you, for I do not know," the woman replied, respectfully. "But she bade me say that she left a letter for you on her dressing-table."
He ran up to Mrs. Leith's dressing-room, and found it in some slight disorder, as if traveling bags had been hurriedly packed.
Amid the dainty litter of the dressing-table he saw a square envelope addressed to himself, and hurriedly tore it open.
His gaze ran over the few pathetic words daintily penciled on the perfumed, satiny sheet.
"Richard," she wrote. "I have gone away from you. I have long felt that I had but a small share in your heart, and now I know that I have, perhaps, no right to your name, and no place in your home. So it is best that I should leave you. I have taken little Golden with me. There is one thing, at least, that I can do. I can be a mother to the child whose father has disowned her, and whose mother is so tragically lost.
"You were wrong, Richard. The child has been wronged, but I believe that she is innocent. I have loved you more than you knew; perhaps more than you cared, and for your sake I will care for your forlorn child. You will not seek for us. We are companions in misery, and you will respect our grief. I cannot tell you where we shall go. But if you find little Golden's mother I shall know it, and the mother shall have her child."
With the simple name, "Gertrude," the letter ended; Richard Leith reread it slowly, filled with a great surprise and wonder.
"She will care for the child I treated so heartlessly," he murmured. "God bless her. I did not know that Gertrude could be so true and noble. I have wronged her indeed, and she has worn the mask of carelessness and frivolity over a wounded heart. Oh, God, if I only knew where to find them."
He almost cursed himself for his cruelty to his wronged and miserable daughter.
He remembered how young she was, and how ignorant of the world when Bertram Chesleigh had won her heart. Perhaps she was not to blame. His wrath waxed hot against the man who had betrayed her guileless innocence.
He went down and asked the housekeeper if Mrs. Leith had gone away in the carriage, and she answered that the lady had walked, and the maid had accompanied her.
"I cannot go south until I have found them," he said to himself, sadly. "Poor little Golden, poor Gertrude."
Before the next day he had visited every depot and every wharf by which they might have left the city, but he had learned nothing. The next day after he inserted a personal in theHerald:
"To Gertrude:—Return with Golden. Her true story is known and she is freely forgiven. Anxiously,R. L."
"To Gertrude:—Return with Golden. Her true story is known and she is freely forgiven. Anxiously,
R. L."
But the two for whom that yearning cry was written were fated never to behold it. And the dreary winter days came and went while he waited for tidings, filled with the heart-sickness of a great despair.
While the winter snow still whirled in blinding drifts through the streets of New York, the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, the birds sang around old Glenalvan Hall in far-away Florida.
Old Dinah crooned her quaint revival hymns in the sunny doorwayof the kitchen, and her old master dozed in the bright, bay-window among the pots of fragrant flowers.
It was February, and hints of the nearing spring were in the air that sighed softly among the flowers, and lifted the thin, white locks from the brow of old Hugh, as his weary head lay resting on the back of his easy-chair.
Very thin, and sad, and mournful looked the old man as he sat in his easy-chair, with his lonely thoughts fixed ever on the past. He was old and weary. Life held no charm for him now.
One thought of the last lonely sheaf waiting for the reaper as he sat with his withered hands folded, and that look of patient grief on his thin, white, aged face.
"Oh, my lost little Golden," he murmured aloud: "She tarries long. The quest for her mother is a weary one. Oh, that God would give me back the mother and child, both innocent and pure as when I lost them."
A sudden shadow fell between him and the light. He looked up and saw a man standing before him, a man with a pale, worn, troubled face, and dark eyes that held the story of a tragedy in their somber depths.
"Pardon," he said, "I have ventured unannounced into your presence. My name is Richard Leith."
The old man stared at him with dim, unrecognizing eyes. That name conveyed no meaning to his mind. He had never heard it before.
"You are a stranger," he said.
"Yes," Richard Leith answered, and stood silent a moment.
How should he tell Hugh Glenalvan that he was the man who had stolen his daughter from him and desolated his life?
It was a hard task. His voice quivered and broke as he said:
"I am a stranger, but I am also your son-in-law."
"I have no son-in-law," the old man replied, gazing blankly at him.
"Your daughter was my wife," said Richard Leith.
"Little Golden?" said the old man, like one dazed.
"Yes," answered the lawyer. "I stole her from you sixteen years ago, and made her my darling wife. Oh, sir, can you ever forgive me the sorrow I have caused you?"
"A wife! She was a wife! Thank God for that," the old man murmured, with trembling delight. "And you have brought her back at last. Where is she, my darling little Golden?"
"Oh, God!" murmured the conscience-smitten man before him.
"Let me see her, my sweet child," cried Hugh Glenalvan, feebly rising. "It was cruel to keep the little one from me so long. Oh, Golden, Golden, come to me, my darling."
Richard Leith put him back with gentle hands into his chair. He knelt down at his feet and told him all his sorrowful story, throwing all the blame on himself, and pleading humbly for pardon from the father whom he had robbed of his darling.
"I loved her," he said. "She was dearer than my own life. I would have brought her back to you in time. I was only waiting for the fame and fortune that came to me soon. But treacherycame between us. I lost her, and henceforth I have lived hand in hand with sorrow and despair."
The soft wind sighing past the window seemed to echo that heavy word "despair."
"At the door of John Glenalvan lies your sorrow and mine," continued Richard Leith, "I am come to call him to account."
"Who are you that dares arraign John Glenalvan?" exclaimed a harsh, blatant voice, as the speaker strode rudely into their presence.
Richard Leith sprang to his feet and confronted the intruder. His dark eyes blazed with wrath as he answered:
"I am Richard Leith, the husband of Golden Glenalvan, whom you falsely reported dead to gain some wicked end of your own. Liar, I have found you out in your sin! I demand my wronged wife at your hands."
John Glenalvan glared lividly at the daring man who thus boldly confronted him with his sin.
The blood retreated from his face and lips, and his eyes were wild and startled.
"Answer me," cried Richard Leith, advancing upon him. "Where is Golden, my wife?"
"You lie! She was never your wife," John Glenalvan retorted, furiously.
"Shame upon you, John, to malign the fair name of your sister," cried his father, indignantly. "Rather rejoice that she is proved innocent at last."
"Let him prove her so, if he can," cried the wretch, maliciously.
"I can do so. Here is the certificate of my marriage to Golden Glenalvan in New York sixteen years ago, replied Richard Leith, unfolding a yellowed paper and holding it open before the eyes of the father and son.
"Then she was really your wife," John said, with unwilling belief.
"Of course she was my wife. How dared you think evil of your own sister?" demanded the lawyer, scornfully.
"I do not answer to you for my thoughts, sir," replied John Glenalvan, angrily.
"But you must answer to me for the deed which has deprived me of my wife and child for fifteen years," cried Richard Leith. "John Glenalvan, where is my wife?"
"How should I know?" he retorted.
"It is too late to fence with me," answered Richard Leith. "You, and you alone, are at the bottom of my wife's mysterious disappearance. You have either shut her up in solitary confinement, or you have murdered her!"
"Murdered her! How dare you hint at such a thing?" John Glenalvan thundered, growing white with fear.
"I dare do more," cried the lawyer, driven to desperation. "If you do not tell me what has become of my wife I will have you arrested for her murder."
At these warning words John Glenalvan threw himself upon his accuser with the cry of an infuriated wild beast.
Richard Leith was weak and ill. He had risen from a sick-bed, on which wasting anxiety and grief had thrown him, when he came to Glenalvan Hall.
He went down like an infant before the strong fury of his opponent, and the old man's wailing cry pierced the air.
"John, hold your hand! For God's sake, do not murder the man!"
John Glenalvan did not heed his father's frightened remonstrance.
He continued to rain furious blows on his feeble but struggling foe.
The fell instinct of murder was aroused within his soul, and Richard Leith would have fallen a sure victim to its fury, but that suddenly the slight form of a woman rushed into the room, and, with a wild and piercing shriek, sprang upon John Glenalvan's neck, clutching it with frantic fingers in the endeavor to tear him from his almost dying victim.
Almost strangling in the fierce tenacity of her grasp, the wretch released Mr. Leith, and springing upward with a savage bound, threw his frail assailant from him into the middle of the room.
The terrible shock hurled her prostrate on the floor. She lay there stunned and bleeding, and the wretch, after one horror-struck glance at her, rushed from the room.
"Golden—it is Golden! and he has killed her" wailed her grandfather, falling on his knees beside her; and Richard Leith, where he lay, half dying, comprehended the anguished wail, and crawled on his hands and knees to the side of his hapless daughter.
It was little Golden, indeed, but she lay still and silent, with the blood oozing from her nostrils and a slight cut on her temple.
As he reached her side, old Dinah rushed into the room.
"Little missie, little missie!" she cried; then she stopped short in terror. "Oh, my Hebenly Master, who has done dis t'ing?"
"Dinah," her master said quickly, "go and send Fred Glenalvan to me."
She hobbled out obediently, and in a moment returned with the handsome young dandy, who glanced at his grandfather with haughty indifference.
"Fredrick," the old man said, with strange sternness, "here are two people whom your father has nearly killed. You must go and bring a doctor for them."
Frederick started at the sight of the bleeding forms upon the floor, but in an instant his countenance hardened into marble.
"If my father has hurt them," he replied, "I doubt not that he had good reason for doing so, and they may die before I will fetch a physician to them."
With that insolent reply he turned on his heel and left the room.
"Vipers!" muttered the old man, indignantly, then he looked at Dinah sadly.
"My faithful old soul," he said, "you must do what you can for them. I must go and seek for help myself."
He went feebly from the room and across the lawn. Outside the gates he encountered a carriage waiting. The driver stood on the ground by the horses' heads, and a lady sat on the satin cushions with a troubled look on her lovely, blond face. She sprang out impulsively and came up to him.
"Oh, sir," she cried, "Iknowyou are Mr. Glenalvan. Have you seen little Golden? She went into the hall a few minutes ago."
"I have seen her, I fear she is dead, and I must bring a doctor," the old man wailed, heart-brokenly.
She caught his arm and turned to the driver.
"Drive into town at your highest speed and fetch a physician," she said, throwing her purse at his feet, then she took the old man's arm and hurried him in.
"I am your little Golden's friend," she explained to him as they went along. "I came here with her and was waiting outside while she paid you a visit."
Old Dinah was bathing the wound of her unconscious mistress when they entered, and Richard Leith lay upon the floor watching her with dim, despairing eyes.
"Oh, Heaven, who has done this terrible deed?" Mrs. Leith cried wildly, as her eyes took in the dreadful scene.
"Gertrude," her husband cried out at the sound of her voice, and she knelt down by him weeping wildly.
"Oh, Richard, who is it that has killed you and your child?" she sobbed in anguish.
"It is John Glenalvan's dreadful work," he replied, then he looked into her face with dim, yearning eyes.
"Gertrude! I believe I am dying," he said faintly. "Will you forgive me before I die?"
"Forgive you?" she said. "Ah, Richard, do not think that I blamed you. You sinned ignorantly."
"Yes, ignorantly," he echoed, and a spasm of pain crossed his face an instant, then he said sadly: "But I did not meanthat, Gertrude. I meant you must forgive me that I was careless and blind, that I did not prize your true heart more."
She put her white hand to her heart, and a look of pain came into the large, blue eyes, then she said with mournful pathos:
"For all the heartaches I have borne. Richard, I freely forgive you."
"Thank you," he murmured, then his eyes dwelt on her gratefully. "It was so noble in you to care for my poor child," he murmured, "but Gertrude, I repented in an hour. I came back to tell her so, and she was gone, both were gone. I sought you everywhere, my heart nearly broke; I fell ill, and lay for weary weeks fevered and maddened by my impatience and anxiety. At last I grew better and came here!"
"Have you foundher?" she murmured, anxiously, while the red blood suffused her fair cheeks.
He shook his head mournfully, and his eyes closed languidly. She believed that he was dead, and started up with a cry of woe, but when the physician came a little later he decided that he was only in a deep swoon.
Golden recovered consciousness, and the hapless father and daughter were removed to adjoining rooms, the physician veering anxiously from one room to another.
He believed that Mr. Leith's life might be saved by his medical skill, but he shook his head ominously over the beautiful, golden-haired child, whose shrill wails of agony pierced every heart, for in the agitation of her mind, and the fearful shock of her heavy fall, the pangs of premature motherhood had came upon her.
John Glenalvan had fled from the scene of his villainy with a speed to which sudden fear and remorse had lent wings. He believed that he had killed Richard Leith and his unfortunate child, and in the fear of punishment for his crime he did not even stop to apprise his family of what had occurred, but hurried away to seek a hiding-place for himself.
Too late he regretted the blind rage that had forced him into the commission of such a desperate deed. The cries of his victims seemed to pursue him in his hurried flight.
His son reported his cowardly deeds to his mother and sister, and they remained lost in fear and wonder.
To do them justice, wicked as they were, they had no idea of the enormity of John Glenalvan's sin. They honestly believed that his sister Golden had disgraced the family. They dreamed not of the dread secret locked in his breast.
Clare made a stealthy tour of discovery into the western wing, and soon finding out how matters stood, returned to her mother in a frenzy of wrath and anger against her hapless cousin, little Golden.
"Oh, mother, such dreadful goings on," she said. "That shameless girl sick in one room, a strange man dead in another, and a doctor, and old Dinah, and a strange woman tending them. If I were you, mother, I really should not stand it. I would turn the whole tribe out of doors—should not you, Fred?"
But Frederick, who, despite his defiant manner to his grandfather, looked pale and uneasy, vetoed the proposition as imprudent.
"I do not know what provocation my father had to maltreat them so," he said, "but certainly, they have a bad case against him; and if the man is dead, as you say, Clare, and if our cousin dies, too, they can indict him for murder."
Mrs. Glenalvan and her daughter were so frightened at that grim word, murder, that they broke into hysterical tears and sobbing, while the hopeful son and heir sat silent, overwhelmed by the dread of evil that had fallen upon them all, to which was added the terrors of doubt and suspense.
"That strange man and woman—who can they be, Fred?" inquired his mother.
"I cannot tell; but I have my suspicions," he replied. "I believe they are the parents of Golden."
"It is no wonder, then, that papa was goaded into attempting murder," cried Clare. "Only think of the impudence of our wicked aunt in coming back to Glanalvan Hall. I should think father must have been maddened at the very sight. And yet, mother, she is one of the fairest women I ever saw. She does not look like a lost woman. She has a very innocent appearance."
There were others beside these three, who wondered over the beautiful, strange woman who claimed to be little Golden's friend.
Old Dinah and her master gazed upon her wonderful beauty, which reminded them so powerfully of the missing Golden's, and they wondered what her name could be.
Old Dinah asked her at last what she should call her, and she answered simply, though with a burning blush:
"My name is Gertrude."
"Mrs. or Miss?" asked the inquisitive old negress, and again the lady's face grew crimson as she answered:
"Mrs."
"They must not know that I was his wife," she said to herself, resolutely. "I could not bear to have them know it. Perhaps they would hate me and judge him unjustly."
But her tears fell heavily as she looked at the deathly white face laying on the pillow, and she wondered to herself if it would not be less hard for her to see him die then and there, than live to find his lost wife again.
"God forgive me for my weakness and selfishness," she cried, starting at her own thoughts. "May he live to find the happiness of which he has been cheated so long."
The long, weary night, filled with mortal agony to poor little Golden, slowly wore away.
At the earliest peep of dawn a messenger arrived from the town with a telegram for Mr. Leith.
He lay barely conscious on his pillow, breathing heavily and slow, and the physician read the message to him cautiously.
It was from Mr. Desmond, and ran briefly:
"We arrived in New York this hour. Is Golden with you? Bertram is half-crazed with anxiety."
And across the lightning wires the fatal message flashed back to their anxious hearts:
"Golden is here. Her child is dead and she is dying."
Dying! This was the end of that brief dream of love, those weary months of supreme self-sacrifice.
Whiter than the pillow on which she lay, beautiful Golden was breathing her sad young life out in heavy sighs and moans, while hidden carefully out of sight beneath its white linen sheet, "There lay the sweet, little baby that never had drawn a breath."
Into that splendid home in New York where the Desmonds hadjust arrived from Europe, that terrible telegram came like a thunder-clap. Bertram Chesleigh's repentant soul reeled in agony before it.
"I am justly punished for my cowardly desertion of my darling," he groaned to his sister, to whom he had confided his sorrowful secret. "But, oh, God! how terribly I have suffered for the weakness and folly of an hour!"
Edith, whose heart had been strangely changed and softened since her reconciliation with her husband, wept with him over the dreadful news.
"Bertram, we must go to her," she said. "In death, if not in life, we must lift the shadow from the poor girl's memory. Elinor Glenalvan is going home to-day. Shall we accompany her?"
"Yes; but do not tell her why we go. She hated my poor, little Golden," he answered, sighing heavily.
Elinor wondered secretly over their going, but rejoiced also. She had gone abroad with them, had had a most delightful time, and she sighed to think that the end had come at last.
But one thing grieved her most of all. All her arts and her beauty, added to Mrs. Desmond's influence, had failed to win Bertram Chesleigh.
She almost hated him when she thought of going home to hear her mother's lamentations over her failure, and her sister's taunts.
Her spirits rose at the welcome news that he was going south with her.
Perhaps she might triumph yet. It was a hopeful augury that he was not willing to lose sight of her yet.
Poor vain and artful Elinor! She did not dream of the real truth.
She believed that Golden had been thrust out of her way forever.
Strangely enough, though she had known the true cause of the Desmonds' separation, she had never been able to ferret out the reason of their reconciliation.
Immediately after Mr. Desmond reached Italy his wife had summarily dismissed Celine.
No hints, nor careless appearance of wonder on Elinor's part could elicit the reason for the maid's dismissal.
She only knew that the Frenchwoman had gone away in insolent triumph, taking with her the money she had wrested from her in payment for her treachery to poor little Golden.
Mrs. Desmond's generous impulse to accompany her brother was frustrated by the sudden illness of her little daughter, so Bertram was forced to go on his sad mission without her, and Elinor was jubilant over the prospect of a long, delightful trip under his exclusive care.
Anticipation and reality are different things, however, as Elinor was fated to learn.
Never was there a more gloomy or self-absorbed cavalier than the handsome and entertaining Mr. Chesleigh on this occasion.
Elinor bit her ruby lip and looked daggers as he lounged in his seat, pretending to be absorbed in a newspaper, but with lipscompressed beneath his dark mustache, and a strange, somber light in the large, black eyes that puzzled Elinor, who had not the key to his mood.
Indeed she began to be conscious of a vague feeling of dread and anxiety.
She asked herself over and over why he had chosen to bear her company on her homeward way.
Evidently it was through no tenderness for her. Though scrupulously polite and attentive, he preserved the appearance of distant friendliness in too marked a fashion to be misinterpreted.
When at last, after traveling without delay or rest, they found themselves seated in the carriage that was to convey them to Glenalvan Hall, Elinor felt a certain sense of relief mingled with her chagrin and disappointment. She loved Bertram Chesleigh, but his moodiness and silence were strangely oppressive.
"Why did he come with me?" she asked herself for the last time as the carriage rolled along the breezy, wooded drive, and her strange companion lay back among the cushions, his hat tilted over his eyes, his face pale, his lips working convulsively. "What will Clare say when she sees how disdainfully he treats me? How she will triumph at my disappointment."
Her heart sank at the prospect of returning to the quietude and dreariness of Glenalvan Hall after the gay, easy, luxurious life she had led for the last few months.
For a moment her love for the indifferent man beside her was transformed to hate.
Why had he slighted her beauty, and her fascinations to turn to that doll-faced child whose life was a disgrace to the Glenalvans?
She hated Bertram Chesleigh because he had not rescued her from the poverty of which she had grown so weary, and from which his love might have delivered her.
"At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I removed that little vixen, Golden, from his pathway," she thought, with vindictive triumph. "If she had remained who knows what might have happened? I should like to know what became of her when she left Mrs. Desmond's. I sincerely hope she drowned herself in the sea!"
The carriage turned a sudden bend in the road, and Elinor, leaning idly forward to note the old, familiar landmarks, gazed intently one moment, then uttered a stifled cry of terror.
Bertram Chesleigh started, like one awaking from a dream.
"What is it? Has anything alarmed you, Miss Glenalvan?" he inquired, courteously.
"Look there," she cried, fearfully, pointing her hand through the window.
He followed the direction of her finger and saw—oh horror, that they were passing the burial-ground of the Glenalvans.
He saw a little band of black-robed mourners grouped around a narrow mound of freshly-thrown-up earth.
He saw the minister standing at the head of the grave with his open book, and fancied he could hear him repeating the solemn,beautiful words with which we consign "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."
"Pray tell the driver to stop," Elinor cried out, excitedly, "I must get out. Someone of my own family must be dead."
He made no answer. He was handing her out with hands that trembled as nervously as her own. One terrible, blasting thought was in his mind.
"It is Golden, my wronged, little wife, and my babe that I never saw, whom they are hiding beneath that little mound," he said to himself, in agony. "Oh, God! that I should have come only in time for this!"
He opened the little, white gate that led into the green burial-place, with its glimmering, white stones, and Elinor silently followed him.
The little group about the grave fell back as they approached, and they saw the men throwing up the earth upon the new-made grave. Its dull, awful thud fell like the crash of a great despair upon his heart.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," murmured the minister's solemn voice, and the conscience-stricken man fell on his knees and hid his face in his hand, afraid and ashamed, for that deep voice seemed to condemn him for the evil he had wrought.
A weak and trembling hand fluttered down on his shoulder, and a thin, quavering voice sounded reproachfully in his ear:
"So you have come to exhult over your wicked work, Bertram Chesleigh."
The wretched man looked up into the streaming eyes of old Hugh Glenalvan.
At a little distance he saw old black Dinah regarding him with looks of horror and loathing. A beautiful, golden-haired woman stood apart, weeping silently, and Elinor Glenalvan had gone to the minister and was speaking to him agitatedly.
Bertram sprang up desperately.
"Oh, sir, for God's sake," he cried to the dejected old man, "tell me whom they have buried here!"
And the answer came in broken tones:
"Golden Glenalvan and her babe."
Bertram Chesleigh, kneeling in the dust that was heaped above the dead heart that had loved him so devotedly, lifted his hands and eyes to Heaven, and cried out, in a broken, contrite voice:
"I call God to witness that it is Golden Chesleigh, not Golden Glenalvan, you have buried here. This dead girl was my wife, made so by a secret marriage last summer. It is my wife and my child you have hidden from me in this low grave. May God forgive me for the wrong I did them."
Then, unable to bear the strain upon his nerves and his heart any longer, the wretched man fell forward heavily, and lay in a deep swoon across the mound that covered little Golden and her child.
A terrible punishment had been meted out to him for the pride and selfishness that had made of his innocent child-wife an outcast, and a creature at whom to point the finger of a seemingly just scorn.
The deathless flame of that deep "remorse that spurns atonement's power" had been kindled in his heart, never to go out save with the breath of life.
For a few moments all believed that Bertram Chesleigh was dead. Elinor Glenalvan, filled with astonishment and deadly rage, devoutly hoped that he was.
Her love had turned to hate, and as by a sudden flash she understood fully the passion of remorse and despair that had brought him to Glenalvan Hall.
The vindictive wish came over her that he had died before he had spoken the brave words that had cleared the stain from the memory of the girl she had hated with such jealous fire and passion. She had yet to learn that every shadow had been cleared from Golden's name.
While she stood like a statue, and angrily regarded the striking scene, the others busied themselves with the restoration of the unconscious man.
Dinah brought cold water from a little spring, and bathed his face and hands. Gertrude held her smelling-salts to his nose.
In a short time he revived and looked about him with an agony of sorrow in his pale, drawn face. His first conscious thought was of his loved and deeply-wronged wife.
"She is dead," he groaned. "I shall never hear her sweet lips pronounce my pardon. Oh, God, did she leave me no message? Did she not curse me in dying for the woe I had wrought?"
They all stood aloof from him except Gertrude. She told him what he asked in a grave and gentle voice.
"She made no mention of you, Mr. Chesleigh. She was patient and brave to the last. She kept her vow of silence to the bitter end, and died with the story of her innocence untold."
"I, coward that I was, bound her to secrecy," he said, "but I did not dream then of what would happen after. I wish to God that she had spoken and vindicated her honor."
And again an expression of the deepest sorrow convulsed the dark, handsome face.
"She was too true and loyal to break her vow," answered Gertrude, tearfully. "I believe that the shame and sorrow of it all killed her. She was a martyr to her love."
He groaned and dropped his head upon his folded arms. There was silence, and every eye but Elinor's rested tearfully upon the low mound beneath which slumbered the poor girl who had died with the brand of the erring upon her, but who in this hour was proven guiltless and pure, as Gertrude had said, a patient martyr to affection.
"Oh, that I might have seen her even once," groaned Bertram Chesleigh, turning instinctively for comfort to the sweet, sympathetic face of Gertrude. "Oh, tell me, did she suffer in dying? Was she conscious?"
She shook her head.
"No, she passed from a quiet slumber into death. The change was so gradual we scarcely knew when she was gone."
"Gone!"
The word thrilled him with a keen and bitter pain. The sweet, child-wife he had loved so dearly was lost from his life forever. She was gone from a world that had used her harshly and coldly, to take her fitting place among the angels.
The soft wind sighing through the trees and the grass seemed to murmur her requiem: "Requiescat in pace."
He rose and stood among them, his heavy eyes turning to the sad, old face of the grandfather whom he had bereaved of his darling. He held out his hand to him humbly.
"Sheis gone from us, and I cannot sue for her pardon," he said, wistfully. "But will you not forgive me, sir, for the sorrow my weakness and pride brought upon her and you?"
But old Hugh Glenalvan's kindly blue eyes flashed upon him with a gleam of their youthful fire, and his voice quivered with anger and despair as he replied:
"I will never forgive you unlesssheshould rise from the grave and forgive you too!"
"Ye must forgive as ye would be forgiven," said the gentle, admonitory voice of the man of God.
But the indignant old man shook off his suppliant hand.
"She was his wife, and he discarded and deserted her. There is no forgiveness for such a sin," he said, with fiery scorn, as he turned away.
They went away and left Bertram alone with the wronged and quiet dead.
Gertrude, in her gentle, womanly pity would fain have persuaded him to go home with them, but he refused to listen.
"Leave me to my lonely vigil here," he said, sorrowfully. "If her gentle spirit is yet hovering about she may accept my bitter grief and repentance as some atonement."
When they had all gone and left him he bowed his head with a bitter cry.
"Oh, Golden, my lost, little darling, only six feet of earth between us, and yet I shall never see you, speak to you, nor hear you again!"
A low, respectful cough interrupted the mournful tenor of his thoughts.
He glanced up and saw the old grave-digger leaning on his spade and regarding him wistfully.
"What are you waiting for, my man?" he inquired, feeling impatient at this seeming intrusion on his grief.
"If you please, sir, I have not yet finished throwing up the earth and shaping the mound," said the man, with some embarrassment.
A bitter cry came from Bertram Chesleigh's lips.
"What! would you bury her still deeper from my sight?" he cried. "Oh, rather throw off this heavy covering of earth and suffer me to look upon my darling one again."
The man stared at him half fearfully.
"Oh, sir, your sorrow has almost crazed you," he said. "Youhad better return to your friends and leave me here to finish my necessary work."
But a new thought, born of his grief and remorse, had come into the mind of the mourner.
"My man, look at me," he said, earnestly; "I want you to open this grave and let me see my wife again. You cannot refuse me when I pray you to do it. Only think! They have buried my child and I have never even seen its face. I must kiss the babe and its mother once, I cannot go away until I have done so."
"Oh, sir, surely you are going mad," the man cried, alarmed. "I have never heard of such a thing. I could not do it if I would. I could not take the coffin out alone."
"Let me help you," said the distracted mourner.
"What you wish is quite impossible, sir," faltered the man, anxiously; "let me beg you to go on to the hall, and leave me to finish my sad duty."
"You must not refuse me, it will break my heart," Bertram Chesleigh cried, "I will pay you well. See," he drew out a handful of shining gold pieces. "I will give you a hundred dollars if you will show me the faces of my wife and child."
The dull eyes of the grave-digger grew bright at that sight. He was poor, and a hundred dollars were wealth to him.
"I am sorry for you, sir, I wish I could do what you wish. That money would do my poor wife and children a deal of good. If you could wait until night," he said, lowering his voice and glancing significantly around him, "I might get help and do the job for you."
Some whispered words passed between them: then Bertram Chesleigh rose and passed out of the green graveyard, casting one yearning look behind him at the low grave that held his darling.
He bent his lagging footsteps toward old Glenalvan Hall, whose ivy-wreathed towers glistened picturesquely in the evening sunshine.
Bertram went in through the wide entrance, and crossing the level lawn walked along the border of the beautiful lake.
"It was here that we parted," he murmured to himself, in his sorrowful retrospection. "How beautiful, how happy she was, how full of love and trust. Oh, God, what dark spell came over me, and made me for twenty-four terrible hours false to my love and my vows? That old man was right. There is no forgiveness for such a terrible sin!"
Frederick Glenalvan saw him from the house, and came down to meet him.
"Chesleigh, I have heard all," he said, with pretended sympathy, "Elinor told us. My dear friend, how sorry I am for you. I was about to go and seek you. You must come up to the house and take some refreshment. You look ready to drop."
"I feel fearfully ill," said Chesleigh, staggering unsteadily, and putting his hand to his head. "I need something, but do not ask me to accept the shelter of your roof, Fred. I have a quarrel with your father. He has bitterly deceived me, and must answer to me for his sin.
"Father is not at home. He has been absent for several days," said Fred, confusedly. "But if you will not come up to the hall sit down here on this bench, and I will bring you some wine."
Bertram obeyed his request almost mechanically. His head ached, and he felt dull, lifeless and inert.
The grief and excitement under which he had labored for several days were beginning to tell heavily upon his overstrained nerves. With the murmured name of Golden, his head drooped on his breast and he relapsed into semi-unconsciousness.
He was aroused by a hand lifting his head, and starting into consciousness, saw Frederick Glenalvan by his side, and Elinor standing before him with a small tray on which were arranged a glass of wine and several slices of cake. He did not notice how white and strange she looked, nor how steely her voice sounded as she said:
"You are faint and ill. Drink this—it will revive you."
She put the wine to his lips, and he drank it thirstily. A fire seemed to run through his veins, new life came into his limbs. He arose and thanked her, but refused the cake.
"I am better, but I cannot eat; it would choke me," he said, and Elinor did not press him. She turned away, and as she passed the lake she furtively tossed the wine-glass in, and the cake after it.
"So father had deceived him, and must answer to him for his sin," she said to herself, bitterly, as she walked along. "Well, well, we shall see! Oh, how I hate him! Yet once I loved him, and hoped to be his wife. I might have been if that little jade had never come between. Oh, how I hate her even in her grave!"
She went back to the hall, walking like one in a dream, with lurid, blazing eyes, and a face blanched to the pallor of a marble image, muttering wickedly to herself.
When Elinor had gone, Frederick Glenalvan turned curiously to Chesleigh.
"So you were really the husband of Golden Leith, and not her betrayer, as everybody believed?" he said.
"Yes, she was my lawful wife; but why do you call her Golden Leith?" Bertram Chesleigh inquired, curiously.
"Did you not know," said Fred, carelessly, "that she had found her father? He is a New York lawyer, and his name is Richard Leith. It seems that her mother was really married to him after all."
"Thank God! Then there is really not a shadow of disgrace upon my poor, wronged wife," cried Bertram Chesleigh, gladly. "Oh, God! if only she had lived."
He was silent a moment, then asked, suddenly:
"Where is Richard Leith now?"
"He is lying ill in the western wing of Glenalvan Hall," Frederick replied, with some embarrassment at the inward consciousness of who caused that illness.
"Is is possible? I must go to him at once," cried Bertram, starting up. "I am an old friend of Richard Leith. Will you accompany me, Fred?"
Frederick walked with him across the grassy slope of the lawn, but left him in the wide corridor that separated the divided dwellings of the strangely sundered family.
"I can accompany you no further," he said, confusedly. "The truth is, Mr. Leith and father have had a little difficulty, and we are not on the best of terms."
He turned away, and Bertram knocked nervously on the door before him, and was admitted by Dinah, who scowled blackly when she saw whom the visitor was.
"I wish to see Mr. Leith," he said, and the old woman silently motioned him to follow her into the sick man's room.
White as the pillows on which he lay, was Richard Leith, but there was a smile of peace on his face, for Gertrude was sitting in a chair by his bedside, and she had been telling him of the strange scene at Golden's burial that evening; how Bertram Chesleigh had claimed her as his wife, and the child for his own.
"Thank God! she was innocent and pure. Oh, how could I ever have doubted the child of my precious Golden," cried the bereaved father, in a passion of remorse and grief.
"You know the whole truth, now. Can you ever forgive me?" inquired Bertram, advancing.
"You here, Bertram Chesleigh? Oh, how could you have been so cruel?" exclaimed Mr. Leith, excitedly, as he rose on his elbow, and looked at the pale face and gleaming eyes of the intruder.
"I will tell you all the truth, and perhaps you will understand me better," began Bertram Chesleigh, eagerly, but before the words were ended, a terrible change came over his face. It was distorted by contortions of pain, and with a shrill cry of agony he fell to the floor in strong convulsions.
Gertrude sprang from her chair with a frightened shriek that brought Dinah rushing into the room with her old master close at her heels, followed by the hired nurse who had the care of Mr. Leith.
"This man is dying—bring a doctor at once!" cried Gertrude, shrilly.
"The doctor is here, madam," said the pleasant voice of the physician himself, who had just entered the door on his usual daily visit to Mr. Leith. "Why, what have we here?"
He bent down over the tall, superb form that lay upon the floor writhing in a violent fit.
There were a few moments of busy silence while he worked over the patient, then he looked up with a dark frown on his broad brow.
"Who is this man, and how came he here?" he inquired.
"He is my son-in-law, doctor, and he had barely entered the room when he fell in a fit," said Richard Leith. "What ails him?"
Another dire contortion of the prostrate form, and the busy physician answered, sternly:
"He has all the symptoms of arsenical poisoning."
The hovering night fell rainy, dark, and cheerless. The skillful physician worked steadily, anxiously, and patiently, trying to save from the grasp of the fell destroyer the writhing victim of Elinor Glenalvan's deadly hate and wicked revenge.
Everyone was filled with grief and sorrow. All warring passions, all human resentments were forgotten in the anxiety with which they watched the wavering balance in which Bertram Chesleigh lay fluctuating between life and death.
Arsenic had been administered to him in a draught of wine, declared the physician, and the wonder arose who had given it to him.
Someone started the theory that he had taken it himself, with intent to commit suicide.
Then they searched him, but not a grain of the deadly drug was discovered on his person. It was all a baffling mystery.
They had left him mourning despairingly over little Golden's grave, and they had seen him no more until he had come to them in this awful condition.
"If I had not come in at the moment I did, no earthly power could have saved him," declared the physician; "As it is, I hope—mind, I only say hope—that I may save his life."
At midnight Gertrude stole to the outer door for a breath of fresh air. She felt faint, weary and dispirited.
The death of Golden, whom she had learned to love very deeply, had deeply grieved her saddened heart.
"Poor child," she moaned, sitting down on the marble steps and gazing sadly at the silver crescent of the young moon as it struggled through a bank of clouds; "she has had a fate as tragic and sad as her poor young mother's."
The sound of muffled footsteps on the grass caused Gertrude to start up with a sudden cry.
A youth was coming toward her, and his low, entreating "stay, madam," arrested her contemplated flight.
He came close to her side, and as his rough garments brushed the stone ballustrade, the cool, moist smell of newly thrown up earth came distinctly to her senses.
She shivered and thought of that new-made grave lying in the silence and calm of the dewy night.
"Will you tell me if Mr. Chesleigh is here, ma'am?" he inquired, respectfully.
"Yes, he is here. What can you want of Mr. Chesleigh at this unseemly hour of the night?" she inquired, in wonder.
"I have important business with him," said the youth, and Gertrude thought she detected a trembling, as of fear, in his voice. "Can I see him a moment, if you please?"
"No, you cannot, for he is ill and unconscious, and we fear that he is dying," she replied.
A smothered exclamation escaped from the youth's lips.
"Oh, this is dreadful!" he said, as if unconscious of having a listener. "What shall we do now?"
"Can I help you?" asked Gertrude, gently.
He bent toward her eagerly.
"Oh, madam, you are a friend of the poor lady that was buried this afternoon?" he said, almost fearfully.
"Yes," she answered, with a quickened heart-beat.
"Then come with me, for God's sake. There is not a minute to lose. Don't be afraid. No harm shall come to you."
So impressed was Gertrude by the youth's strange eagerness that she followed him without a word across the green lawn, through the wide gate, and along the winding road.
"Not here!" she said, aghast, as he paused at the white gate of the Glenalvan burying ground.
"Yes, even here," he answered, solemnly; and the gate-latch clicked softly beneath his hand. "Follow me, lady. No harm shall happen you."