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

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.'"

He ceased, and there was a heavy silence in the room. Bertram Chesleigh broke it in a hushed, low voice.

"Poor, martyred child! Was she, then, so anxious to find her mother?"

"She declared that it was the one dream of her life-time," Richard Leith replied.

"And there is no clew save that which John Glenalvan holds?" inquired Bertram, thoughtfully.

"None, and the villain has fled. I do not believe his own wife and children know aught of his whereabouts."

A look of grave determination swept over Bertram's handsome, pallid face.

"Then I will take up the quest where it dropped from Golden's little hand in dying. I will track the villain, if it is to the end of the world. It shall be my task to vindicate her mother's memory," he said, gravely and earnestly.

"It is my task rather," said Richard Leith.

"We will join hands in the effort," his son-in-law answered.

Old Dinah came in with a note for Mr. Leith. It was from Gertrude.

"I have gone away," she wrote. "I can leave you no address, but I shall be cognizant of all that transpires at Glenalvan Hall, and I may see you again ere long. You will soon be well enough to go about again, and that you may be enabled to solve the distressing mystery of your lost wife's fate, is the earnest prayer of

    "Gertrude."

"Surely no man was ever placed in such a terrible position," said Richard Leith. "For aught I know, I may have two wives living."

"It is through no fault of yours," replied Mr. Chesleigh; "but it is most distressing. Your second wife appears to be a very beautiful and winning woman."

"She is both, but I never discovered her worth until it was too late to love her," Mr. Leith replied, sadly. "Her noble conduct to my helpless daughter first opened my eyes to her lovable character."

"God bless her!" Bertram Chesleigh uttered, fervently.

They had some further conversation, and then Mr. Chesleigh announced his intention of going away.

"I will not trespass further on Mr. Glenalvan's hospitality," he said decidedly. "I do not forget how much reason he has to hate the sight of me."

CHAPTER XLV

The twilight hour found Bertram Chesleigh wending his way to the green graveyard where his hapless wife lay buried. As he had hoped, he found the old grave-digger waiting for him.

He had been sodding the mound with velvety green turf, and planting lilies and immortelles upon it.

"Why have you done this?" he said. "Did you not know I would come to-night? I was at death's door last night, or I would have come as I said. Did you do what you promised?"

"Yes, sir, and waited a long time for you," said the man, doffing his cap respectfully. "I even sent my son to look for you. He learned of your bad condition, and then we were compelled to put the coffin back in the ground again."

There was a strange, repressed excitement in the man's manner, but Mr. Chesleigh, absorbed in the bitterness of his own despair, did not observe it.

He counted over a hundred dollars into the man's hand, and then said, with a tremor of hope in his voice:

"I will double the amount if you will do your work over to-night. I must see her. I am mad for one last look at my darling's face!"

The grave-digger shuddered.

"Oh, sir, it is too late," he said. "Have you forgotten how soon death's touch blasts everything human? And the little babe—that was dead long before she was. I know you could not bear to see them now."

"Hush, hush!" the mourner cried, in a voice of agony. "I will hear no more. Go, now, and leave me!"

"Cheer up, sir," said the man, with a strange gleam in his eyes, as he turned to go. "The Lord may have some blessing in store for you yet, sir."

His only answer was a hollow groan from the wretched man. He threw himself face downward on the green grave, crushing all the sweet lilies and immortelles beneath his shuddering frame, and cried out to Heaven to kill him because he had blighted Golden's innocent life.

He lay there an hour or two, musing sorrowfully over the hapless fate of his beautiful girl-bride.

He recalled their brief, happy love-dream from which they had been so rudely awakened.

Over and over again he cursed himself for that first impulse of pride and selfishness that had made him false to his bride in the hour when he should have protected and shielded her.

A passionate, despairing longing to see her again filled his soul.

"I will go back and wander by the lake again," he resolved, in the madness of his despair. "It was there that we spent our sweetest, most blissful hours. In the calm and silence of the night I will dream them over again."

He went to the lake, but the very spirit of unrest was upon him.

The stars came forth and shone weirdly in the sky, the perfume of spring flowers sweetened the air. He grew restless and fanciful.

Such a brief while ago she had stolen nightly from the haunted rooms to meet him here beside the silvery lake.

It almost seemed that she would come to him presently, gliding like a fairy across the green lawn to the glad shelter of his arms.

Some impulse prompted him to seek the haunted rooms, to spend an hour of solitary musing in their quiet shade.

He knew of a retired stairway by which he could make his way unperceived, and following the blind fate that led him, he went up to the hall and up the narrow, secluded stairs which little Golden had shown him, and by which she had obtained egress to her lover.

He went along the dark corridor with a strangely beating heart, and paused before the closed door of the haunted room.

He placed his hand on the knob, but to his surprise it refused to yield to his touch.

Disappointed, he was about turning away, when a heavy step crossed the floor inside, the key clicked in the lock, and the door was cautiously opened.

A flood of light streamed out into the corridor, and showed Bertram Chesleigh the tall form, and dark, saturnine face of John Glenalvan.

There was a moment of complete astonishment on the part of each of the two men.

Both recoiled from each other in the first suddenness of the shock, and then an angry oath burst from John Glenalvan's lips.