"Yes, dear, it will be better for a time, at least, that I should go away. I shall return north and go back to those quiet quarters in Brooklyn, where you and I spent those peaceful weeks before we came south. When you come to New York with your husband you will find me there."
"I will certainly seek you out," Golden replied. "But surely you do not intend to forsake my father. The doubt and perplexity are all over now. You know that you are legally his wife, my own mother being dead before he ever knew you."
"Yes, I know, dear," she answered, gently. "Yet it is best I should go away for a time. Your father must have time for his grief. After awhile, if he desires it, I may return to him."
Her words were too full of wisdom for anyone to gainsay them, so she went away.
Richard Leith's grief and remorse over his lost little Golden was as deep and passionate as if she had died yesterday instead of more than sixteen years ago.
He was too sorrowful to remember the fair woman he had put in the dead wife's place in the vain hope of stilling the fever and pain that had ached ceaselessly at his heart for sixteen years.
The time came later on when the first wife's memory became a sweet and chastened dream to him, and his second wife's new loveliness of character won its place in his heart.
Some years of quiet happiness and mutual love came to them after they learned to know each other better, but there was no year in which Richard Leith did not return south once, at least, to spend a few solemn hours by the low grave under the whispering cedars and broad-leaved magnolias, where the broken marble shaft bore the fond inscription:
"IN LOVING MEMORY OF GOLDEN,
WIFE OF RICHARD LEITH."