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.