Little Golden's Daughter; or, The Dream of a Life Time

It was not long before Mr. Glenalvan had heard the whole of Golden's simple love-story from his servant. They were filled with horror and grief at its too probable termination.

"Dinah, it may be that she has stolen out into the grounds for a walk in the fresh air. She was growing very restless with the close, indoor confinement. Have you thought of that?" he said, hoping feebly against hope.

"Shall I go out and look for her, den, ole massa?" said Dinah, in a tone that plainly betrayed her hopelessness.

"Let us both go," said old Hugh.

They sallied forth anxiously into the brilliant moonlight that lay in silvery brightness all over the sweet, southern landscape—old Hugh, bareheaded, in his tattered dressing-gown, old Dinah in her short night-dress, too ridiculous a figure for anyone to contemplate without inward mirth.

It so happened that Elinor, whom the hard exigencies of poverty compelled to be her own dressmaker, had sat up late that night to complete some alterations in a dress in which she had intended to array her fair self for the morrow.

Having stitched on the last bit of lace, she went to the window and leaned out to cool her heated brow.

"My head aches, and I am almost melted with sewing by that hot lamp," she said to herself, fretfully. "How I hate this poverty that grinds one down so! When once I am married to Bertram Chesleigh I will never touch a needle again! I will order all my dresses of Worth, of Paris. And I will marry Bertram Chesleigh! I swear it; and woe be to anyone that tries to prevent me!"

Her dark eyes flashed luridly a moment, and her white hand was angrily clenched.

She was thinking of Clare, who had persisted in rivaling her with Mr. Chesleigh.

At that moment the subdued murmur of voices floated up to her window from the lawn.

She glanced down quickly, and saw old Dinah and her master crossing the lawn, their grotesque shadows flying long and dark before them in the brilliant moonlight.

Quick as thought Elinor was out of her seat, and gliding softly through the door in quest of her father.

Before old Glenalvan and his servant had crossed the lawn, two dark figures stole forth from the hall and silently followed them.

On the green border of the silver lake two figures were standing in the beautiful moonlight. One was a man, tall, dark, splendid, with a princely beauty.

His arm was thrown protectingly about a slender form that clung lovingly to his side.

It was Golden Glenalvan, dressed in a dark suit and light cloth jacket, a neat, little walking-hat, set jauntily on her streaming, golden curls.

Her blue eyes were lifted tenderly, and yet anxiously to her lover's face.

"Oh, Bert," she said, giving him the tender name by which he had taught her to call him, "you must indeed let me go now. We have been saying good-bye at least a half an hour."

"Parting is such a sweet pain," said the lover, bending to kiss the tempting, up-turned lips. "Give me just one more minute, my darling."

"But I have been out so long," she objected, faintly. "What if black mammy should awake and find me gone?"

"There is not the slightest danger," said Bertram Chesleigh carelessly. "The old woman sleeps so soundly that a thunder-clap would scarcely wake her."

But just at that moment of his fancied security, old Dinah, in Golden's deserted chamber, was vigorously shaking her empty night-dress in a dazed attempt to evolve from its snowy folds the strangely missing girl.

Golden smiled, then sighed faintly. He kissed her lips before the sigh had fairly breathed over them.

"If you must indeed go, my darling," he said to her in a low voice, freighted with passionate tenderness, "tell me once again, my little Golden, how dearly you love me."

"Love you," echoed the beautiful girl, and there was a Heaven of tenderness in the starry blue eyes she raised to his face. "Oh, my dearest, if I talked to you until the beautiful sun rose to-morrow, I could not put my love into words. It is deep in my heart, and nothing but death can ever tear it thence."

She threw her arms around his neck, and their lips met in a long, passionate kiss. There was a silence broken only by the soft sigh of the rippling waves, while they stood

"tranced in long embraces,
Mixed with kisses, sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth."

On that hush of exquisite silence that brooded round them, broke hastening footsteps and angry voices.

The lovers started back from each other in dismay to find themselves surrounded by an astonished group.

Old Dinah formed a central and conspicuous figure, beyond which old Hugh Glenalvan's silvery locks fluttered forlornly in the breeze.

John Glenalvan and Elinor, his daughter, brought up the rear. Perhaps the old gentleman and his servant were as much astonished at seeing these followers as they were at the sight that met their eyes.

Old Dinah recovered her self-possession first of all, perhaps because she had vaguely suspected some such eclaircissement from the facts already in her possession.

She rushed forward and caught her disobedient nursling by the hand.

"Oh, my darlin', my honey, chile," she cried. "Come away from dat black-hearted wilyun to your grandpa and your ole brack mammy."

But to the consternation of everybody, the girl shook Dinah's hand off, and clung persistently to her lover.

He drew his arm protectingly around the slight figure, and Golden cried out with pretty, childish defiance:

"He loves me! he loves me! and I will not leave him."

That sight and those words fairly maddened Elinor Glenalvan. The blood seemed to boil in her veins.

"Loves you—ha! ha! loves you, the child of sin and shame!" she cried out, in a hoarse voice of bitter scorn and passion. "Oh, yes, he loves you. That is why he has lured you to your ruin, as a stranger did your mother before you."

"Hush, Elinor," said John Glenalvan, in his sternest tone; then he looked at his father, who had crept to Golden's side, and stood there trembling and speechless. "Father," he said, harshly, "take the girl away. I must speak with Mr. Chesleigh alone."

"I will not go," said Golden, and she looked up into her lover's face with a strange, wistful pleading in her soft, blue eyes, and in her sweet, coaxing lips.

He bent down and whispered something that made her leave his side and put her small hand gently into her grandfather's.

"Grandpa, I will go home with you now," she said to him, tremulously, and he led her away, followed by Dinah, who glared angrily behind her, and muttered opprobrious invectives as she went.

If looks could have killed, Bertram Chesleigh would never have lived to figure any further in the pages of my romance.

CHAPTER X

Bertram Chesleigh was left alone by the lake, with the angry eyes of John Glenalvan glaring upon him, while Elinor, speechless with rage, stood a little apart and watched him.

"Mr. Chesleigh, may I ask the meaning of this singular scene?" inquired his host, stiffly.

Bertram Chesleigh, standing with folded arms in dignified silence, opened his lips and said, briefly: