Little Golden stared at the closing door through which her father had
vanished, with blank, terror-filled eyes. To have found him and lost
him like this was too terrible.
She sat gazing before her like one dazed, with the angry words of
her father still ringing in her ears, when a low and fluttering sigh
recalled her to the fact of Mrs. Leith's presence which she had
forgotten for the moment in her anguish of soul.
She looked around shrinkingly at the fair woman who had taken her
mother's place, and her mother's name, dreading to meet a glance of
scorn, even transcending that which her father had cast upon her.
Instead she met the beautiful, troubled eyes of her step-mother fixed
upon her with tenderest pity.
Mrs. Leith had been vain, careless, and frivolous all her life. She
had never known a care or sorrow in the whole course of her pleasant,
prosperous existence.
The hard crust of selfishness and indifference had grown over the
better impulses of a nature that at the core was true, and sweet, and
womanly.
The last hour with its strange revelations had been the turning point
in her life.
She realized with a shudder the dreadful position in which she was
placed. She was married to a man who, in all probability, had a wife
living.
It was possible that she herself was almost as much an outcast as the
wretched girl who crouched weeping on the floor, homeless, friendless,
and forsaken, in the hour of her direst need.
Never before had Mrs. Leith been brought face to face with a real
sorrow. She gazed wonderingly upon poor little Golden, the course
of whose checkered life had run as strangely as that of one of her
favorite novel heroines.
So it happened that when Golden looked timidly up expecting to be
immediately annihilated by her scornful glance, she met only the
gentlest pity beaming from the large, blue eyes of the unhappy woman.
"Come to me, Golden," she said, and as the young girl advanced she
asked her in a strangely saddened voice:
"Are you angry with me, child, that I have filled your mother's place
and worn her name for twelve, long years?"
"No, I am not angry," Golden answered, gently. "It was through no fault
of yours--you did not know."
"No, I did not know," Mrs. Leith murmured, putting her hands to her
eyes while the tears fell through her fingers. "I did not know, and now
it is too late."
"What shall you do now?" Golden asked her wonderingly.
"I shall go away," Mrs. Leith replied, sadly.
"Are you angry with my father?" asked the girl.
"No, Golden, he sinned ignorantly," replied Mrs. Leith. "Therefore I
cannot blame him. But I must go away from him, and never see him again
until he learns the truth whether or not his first wife was living when
he married me."
Then there was a brief silence. The two women, so lately mistress and
maid--now placed upon the same level by the equalizing hand of sorrow,
sat still a little while looking out upon the unknown future with
dreary, hopeless eyes. Then Mrs. Leith roused herself with an effort.
"And you, Golden--where will you go? What will you do?" she asked.
"God knows," the girl exclaimed, hopelessly. "I am so stunned by the
revelations of to-day that I know not where to turn. For weary months
the dream of finding and reclaiming my guilty mother has filled and
occupied my thoughts. Now that I know her innocent and pure, the
terrible mystery of her fate chills the blood in my veins. Where shall
I look for her? How shall I find her?"
Mrs. Leith looked at her compassionately.
"Poor child!" she said. "You are too ill and weary to seek for anyone
now. Leave that sorrowful quest to your father, and place yourself in
my care."
The tears brimmed over in Golden's beautiful eyes at the kindly spoken
words of her step-mother.
"Oh, madam," she cried, "you offer to befriend me. Then you do not
believe that I am the lost and guilty creature they would fain make me
out."
Mrs. Leith's beautiful face beamed with sympathy as she answered:
"No, Golden, I do not believe you are a sinner. I have a strong
conviction that you are a deserted or discarded wife, and I will care
for you in your forlorn situation with the tenderness of your own
mother."