Someone started the theory that he had taken it himself, with intent to commit suicide.
Then they searched him, but not a grain of the deadly drug was discovered on his person. It was all a baffling mystery.
They had left him mourning despairingly over little Golden's grave, and they had seen him no more until he had come to them in this awful condition.
"If I had not come in at the moment I did, no earthly power could have saved him," declared the physician; "As it is, I hope—mind, I only say hope—that I may save his life."
At midnight Gertrude stole to the outer door for a breath of fresh air. She felt faint, weary and dispirited.
The death of Golden, whom she had learned to love very deeply, had deeply grieved her saddened heart.
"Poor child," she moaned, sitting down on the marble steps and gazing sadly at the silver crescent of the young moon as it struggled through a bank of clouds; "she has had a fate as tragic and sad as her poor young mother's."
The sound of muffled footsteps on the grass caused Gertrude to start up with a sudden cry.
A youth was coming toward her, and his low, entreating "stay, madam," arrested her contemplated flight.
He came close to her side, and as his rough garments brushed the stone ballustrade, the cool, moist smell of newly thrown up earth came distinctly to her senses.