dearly you love me."
"Love you," echoed the beautiful girl, and there was a Heaven of tenderness in the starry blue eyes she raised to his face. "Oh, my dearest, if I talked to you until the beautiful sun rose to-morrow, I could not put my love into words. It is deep in my heart, and nothing but death can ever tear it thence."
She threw her arms around his neck, and their lips met in a long, passionate kiss. There was a silence broken only by the soft sigh of the rippling waves, while they stood
"tranced in long embraces,
Mixed with kisses, sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth."
On that hush of exquisite silence that brooded round them, broke hastening footsteps and angry voices.
The lovers started back from each other in dismay to find themselves surrounded by an astonished group.
Old Dinah formed a central and conspicuous figure, beyond which old Hugh Glenalvan's silvery locks fluttered forlornly in the breeze.
John Glenalvan and Elinor, his daughter, brought up the rear. Perhaps the old gentleman and his servant were as much astonished at seeing these followers as they were at the sight that met their eyes.
Old Dinah recovered her self-possession first of all, perhaps because she had vaguely suspected some such eclaircissement from the facts already in her possession.
She rushed forward and caught her disobedient nursling by the hand.
"Oh, my darlin', my honey, chile," she cried. "Come away from dat black-hearted wilyun to your grandpa and your ole brack mammy."
But to the consternation of everybody, the girl shook Dinah's hand off, and clung persistently to her lover.
He drew his arm protectingly around the slight figure, and Golden cried out with pretty, childish defiance:
"He loves me! he loves me! and I will not leave him."
That sight and those words fairly maddened Elinor Glenalvan. The blood seemed to boil in her veins.
"Loves you—ha! ha! loves you, the child of sin and shame!" she cried out, in a hoarse voice of bitter scorn and passion. "Oh, yes, he loves you. That is why he has lured you to your ruin, as a stranger did your mother before you."
"Hush, Elinor," said John Glenalvan, in his sternest tone; then he looked at his father, who had crept to Golden's side, and stood there trembling and speechless. "Father," he said, harshly, "take the girl away. I must speak with Mr. Chesleigh alone."
"I will not go," said Golden, and she looked up into her lover's face with a strange, wistful pleading in her soft, blue eyes, and in her sweet, coaxing lips.
He bent down and whispered something that made her leave his side and put her small hand gently into her grandfather's.
"Grandpa, I will go home with you now," she said to him, tremulously, and he led her away, followed by Dinah, who glared angrily behind her, and muttered opprobrious invectives as she went.
If looks could have killed, Bertram Chesleigh would never have lived to figure any further in the pages of my romance.
CHAPTER X
Bertram Chesleigh was left alone by the lake, with the angry eyes of John Glenalvan glaring upon him, while Elinor, speechless with rage, stood a little apart and watched him.
"Mr. Chesleigh, may I ask the meaning of this singular scene?" inquired his host, stiffly.
Bertram Chesleigh, standing with folded arms in dignified silence, opened his lips and said, briefly:
"It means, Mr. Glenalvan, that I have made the acquaintance of your niece and fallen in love with her."
A threatening flash came into Elinor's eyes in the moonlight. She bit her lips fiercely to keep back the words that rose to them.
"I am sorry to hear that," said John Glenalvan, in a subdued voice. Inwardly he was raging with anger, but he allowed no trace of it to escape him. "Will you tell me where and how you became acquainted with that child?"
"I must decline to do so," said the young man, firmly.
John Glenalvan looked around at his daughter.
"Elinor, return to the house," he said. "I will join you there presently."
Elinor walked away, but she did not return to the hall as her father had commanded. Instead, she hid herself behind a clump of willows, where she could hear every word that passed between the two men.
Some excited words ensued. Bertram Chesleigh was cool and calm. He denied that John Glenalvan had any right to call him to account for what he carelessly termed his innocent flirtation with little Golden.
"From what I can hear," he said, "you have treated the girl both cruelly and wrongfully. I stand ready to answer to Golden's grandfather for any wrong he may consider I have done, but I shall make no apology to you, Mr. Glenalvan."
"Why, not?" said the man, with repressed passion. "The girl is my niece!"
"Yet you have wickedly secluded her from all society, and even debarred her of her freedom," said Bertram Chesleigh, indignantly. "It is your fault alone that she has been driven to seek the natural delights of youth in a clandestine manner."
"It is not my fault, but her mother's," said John Glenalvan, significantly.
His face grew pale as he spoke; his eyes strayed furtively to the quiet lake, lying silvery and serene in the clear moonlight.
"How? I do not understand you," said the other, haughtily.
John Glenalvan hesitated a moment. When he spoke it was with an affectation of deep feeling and manly sorrow.
"Mr. Chesleigh," he said, "your unhesitating charge against me of cruelty to my niece forces me to the disclosure of a most painful family secret—one that I would fain have guarded from your knowledge. There is a strong reason for my course toward Golden Glenalvan."
He paused, and the listener said, hoarsely:
"A reason–" then paused, because his voice had broken utterly.
"Yes, a reason," was the bitter reply. "Mr. Chesleigh, little Golden is the child of my own and only sister, but—how shall I tell you—she has no right and no place in the world. She is a nameless child!"
The solid earth seemed to reel beneath Mr. Chesleigh's feet. He staggered back dizzily, and threw up his hands as if the man had struck him.
"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