And the answer came in broken tones:
"Golden Glenalvan and her babe."
Bertram Chesleigh, kneeling in the dust that was heaped above the dead heart that had loved him so devotedly, lifted his hands and eyes to Heaven, and cried out, in a broken, contrite voice:
"I call God to witness that it is Golden Chesleigh, not Golden Glenalvan, you have buried here. This dead girl was my wife, made so by a secret marriage last summer. It is my wife and my child you have hidden from me in this low grave. May God forgive me for the wrong I did them."
Then, unable to bear the strain upon his nerves and his heart any longer, the wretched man fell forward heavily, and lay in a deep swoon across the mound that covered little Golden and her child.
A terrible punishment had been meted out to him for the pride and selfishness that had made of his innocent child-wife an outcast, and a creature at whom to point the finger of a seemingly just scorn.
The deathless flame of that deep "remorse that spurns atonement's power" had been kindled in his heart, never to go out save with the breath of life.