"I had nowhere to go—I was friendless and penniless. What could I do but stay?" moaned Golden.
"You should have drowned yourself. You are not fit to live, you wicked, deceitful girl. So you were Mr. Chesleigh's mistress after all, although you swore that you were pure and innocent!" blazed Elinor.
"I am innocent! I was never Bertram Chesleigh's mistress!" Golden cried. "I am his own true——" she stopped with a moan of anguish. "Go, I must not tell—I must keep my promise! Oh, Elinor, you are my cousin. Do not be so hard and cruel!"
"How dare you claim me as your cousin?" cried Elinor, angrily, "Get up from the floor and stop making a simpleton of yourself. You have got to go away from here. Do you understand me?"
Golden rose to her feet and looked steadily into Elinor's face with flashing blue eyes.
A spirit was roused within her that quite equaled her cousin's.
"Elinor," she answered, "I understand you, but let me tell you here and now, that I defy your commands. You have no authority over me, and I am the mistress of my own actions. I shall remain in Mrs. Desmond's service as long as I choose to do so. Your whole treatment of me has been such as to merit no consideration at my hands, and it shall receive none."
If angry looks could have killed, little Golden would never have survived her defiant speech, for Elinor's dark eyes glared upon her with the deadly fury of an enraged tigress.
"You will not go," she hissed. "Perhaps you think to stay here and resume your old sinful relations with Bertram Chesleigh."
Before Golden could reply to the cruel taunt, there was an unthought-of interruption.