It whitened to the awful hue of death, and he reeled backward like a smitten man.
A faint cry came from Mrs. Leith, who had dropped heavily into a chair.
"Oh, Heaven, if she is yet living, what, then, am I?"
Richard Leith went to her side, and looked down at her white, scared face, pitifully.
"Gertrude," he said to her gently, "we have both been the victims of a terrible wrong. When I married you several years after the loss of my first wife, won by your beauty, which reminded me of my poor, little Golden's, I honestly believed that she was dead. There is some terrible mystery here, and John Glenalvan is at the bottom of it. But I will wring the truth from his false lips, and if my lost little Golden has come to harm at his hands, his life shall pay the penalty of his sin!"
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
"Oh, father," cried little Golden. "Why did you lure my poor mother from her home. She was so young, so trusting. Why did you persuade her to desert her parents?"
The man's pale, handsome features quivered all over with vain remorse and penitence.
"You do well to reproach me, little Golden," he sighed. "There is no excuse for my sin. But I will tell you how I came to act so imprudently.