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

"Yes, you must sartainly promise it," was the uncompromising reply.

There was silence for a moment, and Dinah saw the tears come into the sweet, blue eyes.

"Honey, chile, does you promise me?" she inquired, only confirmed in the opinion by this demonstration.

"Yes, I promise not to speak to him unless you give me leave, black mammy," replied Golden, with quivering lips.

"That's right, darling. Mammy can depend on your word. Lie down, and go to sleep, honey, and I'll fetch my pallet in yere, and sleep on de flo' by your bedside, so that no one kin 'trude on you ag'in."

The girl laid her fair head silently on the pillow, and Dinah threw down a quilt on the floor and rolled herself in it. She was soon snoring profoundly.

Not so with beautiful Golden. It was quite impossible for her to sleep again. She shut her eyelids resolutely, but the busy, beautiful brain was too active to admit of her losing consciousness again. She lay thinking of the splendid, dark-eyed stranger.

"He has kissed me twice," she whispered to her heart, "and yet I do not even know his name. I wonder if I shall ever see him again. I hope I shall."

As she remembered how earnestly he had apologized for his presence in her room, she could not believe him the wicked villain old Dinah had so loudly represented him.

"He is handsome, and I believe that he is good," the girl said to herself, "and they tell me Elinor wants to marry him; I would like to marry him myself, just to spite my cousins."

Poor little Golden! Her spite against her cousins was almost as old as her years. They had always hated her, and Golden had been quick to find it out and resent it.

She had a quick and fiery temper, but it did not take her long to repent of her little fits of passion.

She was a bright, winsome, lovable child. It was a wonder that anyone could hate her for her beautiful, innocent life.

Yet there were those who did, and it was beginning to dawn vaguely on the mind of the girl that it was so. She knew that her life was passed differently from that of the other girls of her age and class.

There were no teachers, no companions, no pleasures for her, and no promise of any change in the future.

She wondered a little why it was so, but she never complained to her grandfather. It was, perhaps, only his way, she said to herself, little dreaming of the dark mystery that lay like a deep, impassible gulf between her and the dwellers in the outside world of which she knew so very, very little.

CHAPTER VIII

A week elapsed, and there seemed but little prospect of the little prisoner's release from the haunted chambers of the ruined wing.

The Glenalvans' guest lingered on, fascinated, it appeared, by the attractions of the beautiful Elinor. At least Elinor stoutly maintained this fact in the privacy of the family circle, while Clare as obstinately persisted that Mr. Chesleigh was perfectly impartial in his attentions to both.

But however doubtful was Elinor's impression, the fact remained that he was pleased with his visit.

He consented by their urgent invitation to prolong his stay another week. The girls were jubilant over his decision.

Meanwhile, old Dinah watched her secluded nursling with unremitting vigilance. She could not remain with her all day, because her housekeeping duties took her constantly into the lower part of the house, but she visited her intermittently, and at night rolled herself in a thick counterpane and slept on the floor by the side of Golden's couch.

She took the added precaution to turn the rusty key in the lock at night.

Old Dinah had never heard the familiar adage that "love laughs at locksmiths."

She was ordinarily a very sound and healthy sleeper. The mere accident of a rheumatic attack, and consequent sleeplessness, had caused her appearance the night Mr. Chesleigh had entered the room.

Usually she might have been lifted, counterpane and all, and carried away bodily without being aware of it.

Nearly two weeks after the night of her rencontre with Mr. Chesleigh, old Dinah awoke suddenly "in the dead waste and middle of the night," seized in the relentless grip of her old enemy, the rheumatism.

She rolled herself out of her quilt and sat upright, groaning dolorously, and rubbing her knees in which the pain had settled.

"Oh, Lordy! oh, Lordy!" she groaned, "how my ole bones does ache! Miss Golden! Miss Golden! my precious lam', wake up, and bid your ole brack mammy a las' far'well. I'm a-dyin', sartin, shuah!"

But Golden, usually a very light sleeper, made no reply. Dinah reared her woolly head upward and looked into the bed.

The bed was empty.

Then Dinah looked around her in amazement to see if Golden was not in the room, laughing at her lugubrious groans as she had often done before. But she saw no trace of her young mistress.

"Miss Golden! Miss Golden!" she called, "is you in de udder room? Ef you is, come in here! I'se berry sick, honey, almos' a-dyin'."

But her repeated calls elicited no reply. It appeared that pretty Golden was out of sight and hearing.

Suddenly old Dinah saw the dainty, white, ruffled night-dress, in which Golden had retired that night, lying in a snowy heap upon the floor.

Dinah seized upon the garment and shook it vigorously, as if she expected to see the slight form of her young mistress drop from its folds to the floor.

"Um—me-e-e," she groaned, "has de sperets carried de chile off?"

She glanced up at the row of pegs where she had hung Golden's few articles of apparel. Her best dress—a dark-blue cashmere—was gone, also her hat and a summer jacket.

"She hab runned away from us," old Dinah exclaimed, with almost a howl of despair.

The thought inspired her with such grief and terror that she forgot her ailment entirely. She hobbled out from the room and made her way down stairs to her master's apartment and burst into his presence—a ludicrous object indeed in her striped cotton bed-gown.

Old Hugh Glenalvan, late as it was, had not retired to bed. Wrapped in an old wadded dressing-gown he sat in an easy-chair before an old, carved oaken cabinet.

One quaint little drawer was open, and the white-haired old man was poring over some simple treasures he had taken from it—simple treasures, yet dearer to his heart than gold or precious stones—a few old photographs, an old-fashioned ambrotype in an ebony case, a thin, gold ring and some locks of hair.

Upon this sad and touching picture of memory and tenderness old Dinah's grotesque figure broke startlingly.

"Ole massa! ole massa!" she cried, wildly, "has you seen little missie? Is she here with you?"

The old man swept his treasures off his knees into the quaint cabinet and looked at his old servant in amazement.

"Dinah, what does this startling intrusion mean?" he inquired, pushing his spectacles off his brow and regarding her with a mild frown.

"Little Golden is missing. She hab runned away from us, ole massa!" shouted Dinah, desperately.

"Dinah, you must be crazy," repeated Mr. Glenalvan, blankly.

"It's de Lard's truth, ole massa. She hab done followed in her mudder's footsteps! Dat han'some man ober at John Glenalvan's has been and gone and 'ticed our Golden from us," wailed the old negress, in despair.

CHAPTER IX