"I will tell you, then, briefly," she answered. "You remember how you bribed the grave-digger to open her coffin for you that night?"
"Yes, and then I was too ill to keep my appointment," he answered.
"That wild fancy of yours was the means of her rescue," said Mrs. Leith. "When the man opened the coffin to be in readiness for you, he discovered slight signs of life in Golden. Growing alarmed and impatient at your tardiness, he sent his son to look for you, and the youth encountered me. I went with him, and we removed her to the man's little cottage near by. Little by little we fed the signs of reviving life, and you see the result."
"For which I bless and thank you forever," he said, kissing her hand respectfully.
"I have but little more to say," she went on, smiling a little sadly, "and it is this: Golden is very weak and exhausted yet. She is not strong enough to bear the excitement of her mother's burial. I will remain here with her while they are bearing Mrs. Leith to the grave, and I will tell her your whole story. She shall hear how you came back here to seek her in two days after your ill-considered desertion of her, and found her gone. I will tell her how nobly you vindicated her honor beside her grave. She shall know that you forced John Glenalvan to reveal the hidden story of her mother's fate. When you come back I think she cannot fail to forgive you."
"You will do all this for me?" he said, with a strange moisture in his eyes. "I cannot thank you sufficiently. You are an angel."
"No, only a very faulty and sad-hearted woman," she replied, with a pensive sigh, and then they went back to the mourners.
She kept her promise nobly. While they bore the poor remains of Richard Leith's first wife to the grave, his second wife sat with his daughter and tried to turn the swelling current of her grief by relating the story of Bertram Chesleigh's repentance and atonement.
"Golden, if you could have heard his noble vindication of your honor beside your grave; how proudly he claimed you for his wife, and your child for his own, you could not fail to pity and forgive him for the one great error into which he was led by his own pride and John Glenalvan's evil counsel."
"I have suffered so much through his fault," said the wronged wife, with mournful pathos.