"He is proud. The blow tells fearfully," thought Elinor, watching him through the trees with vindictive eyes. "Ah, my defiant Golden, your last chance is gone now. He will never look at you again!"
"Mr. Glenalvan, you do not mean it. You are but trying my credulity," cried Bertram Chesleigh.
"Is it likely that I would publish a falsehood to my own discredit?" inquired the other.
"No, no—but, oh, God, this is too dreadful to believe!"
"Dreadful, but true," groaned John Glenalvan. "Golden is the child of sin and shame. If I had had my way she would have been consigned to a foundling asylum. But my father weakly insisted on rearing her himself, and I was injudicious enough to permit it. The only stipulation I made was that she should be kept away from the sight of the world as much as possible. I see now that all precautions were useless. Young as she is, the bad blood in her veins begins to show itself already in depraved conduct."
"Hush! do not censure her harmless meetings with me," said Bertram Chesleigh, in a voice of agony. "The child is so pure and innocent she has no idea of evil. I would die before I would wrong her!"
"I am glad to hear you say so," said the other. "If you really mean it, perhaps you will agree to relinquish your useless pursuit of her. You would not be willing to marry her after what you have heard, I am quite sure."
Meantime little Golden walked away with her grandfather, who stumbled along like one in a painful dream, his gray head bowed as if beneath the weight of sorrow, his footsteps faltering and slow.
He had not spoken one word, and his silence impressed Golden with a sense of her wrong-doing and disobedience far more than the loudest reproaches could have done.