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, "I _know_ you 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 mean _that_, 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 found _her_?" 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."