"It is Golden, my wronged, little wife, and my babe that I never saw, whom they are hiding beneath that little mound," he said to himself, in agony. "Oh, God! that I should have come only in time for this!"
He opened the little, white gate that led into the green burial-place, with its glimmering, white stones, and Elinor silently followed him.
The little group about the grave fell back as they approached, and they saw the men throwing up the earth upon the new-made grave. Its dull, awful thud fell like the crash of a great despair upon his heart.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," murmured the minister's solemn voice, and the conscience-stricken man fell on his knees and hid his face in his hand, afraid and ashamed, for that deep voice seemed to condemn him for the evil he had wrought.
A weak and trembling hand fluttered down on his shoulder, and a thin, quavering voice sounded reproachfully in his ear:
"So you have come to exhult over your wicked work, Bertram Chesleigh."
The wretched man looked up into the streaming eyes of old Hugh Glenalvan.
At a little distance he saw old black Dinah regarding him with looks of horror and loathing. A beautiful, golden-haired woman stood apart, weeping silently, and Elinor Glenalvan had gone to the minister and was speaking to him agitatedly.
Bertram sprang up desperately.
"Oh, sir, for God's sake," he cried to the dejected old man, "tell me whom they have buried here!"