He groaned and dropped his head upon his folded arms. There was silence, and every eye but Elinor's rested tearfully upon the low mound beneath which slumbered the poor girl who had died with the brand of the erring upon her, but who in this hour was proven guiltless and pure, as Gertrude had said, a patient martyr to affection. "Oh, that I might have seen her even once," groaned Bertram Chesleigh, turning instinctively for comfort to the sweet, sympathetic face of Gertrude. "Oh, tell me, did she suffer in dying? Was she conscious?" She shook her head. "No, she passed from a quiet slumber into death. The change was so gradual we scarcely knew when she was gone." "Gone!" The word thrilled him with a keen and bitter pain. The sweet, child-wife he had loved so dearly was lost from his life forever. She was gone from a world that had used her harshly and coldly, to take her fitting place among the angels. The soft wind sighing through the trees and the grass seemed to murmur her requiem: "_Requiescat in pace_." He rose and stood among them, his heavy eyes turning to the sad, old face of the grandfather whom he had bereaved of his darling. He held out his hand to him humbly. "_She_ is gone from us, and I cannot sue for her pardon," he said, wistfully. "But will you not forgive me, sir, for the sorrow my weakness and pride brought upon her and you?" But old Hugh Glenalvan's kindly blue eyes flashed upon him with a gleam of their youthful fire, and his voice quivered with anger and despair as he replied: "I will never forgive you unless _she_ should rise from the grave and forgive you too!" "Ye must forgive as ye would be forgiven," said the gentle, admonitory voice of the man of God. But the indignant old man shook off his suppliant hand. "She was his wife, and he discarded and deserted her. There is no forgiveness for such a sin," he said, with fiery scorn, as he turned away. They went away and left Bertram alone with the wronged and quiet dead. Gertrude, in her gentle, womanly pity would fain have persuaded him to go home with them, but he refused to listen. "Leave me to my lonely vigil here," he said, sorrowfully. "If her gentle spirit is yet hovering about she may accept my bitter grief and repentance as some atonement." When they had all gone and left him he bowed his head with a bitter cry. "Oh, Golden, my lost, little darling, only six feet of earth between us, and yet I shall never see you, speak to you, nor hear you again!" A low, respectful cough interrupted the mournful tenor of his thoughts. He glanced up and saw the old grave-digger leaning on his spade and regarding him wistfully. "What are you waiting for, my man?" he inquired, feeling impatient at this seeming intrusion on his grief. "If you please, sir, I have not yet finished throwing up the earth and shaping the mound," said the man, with some embarrassment. A bitter cry came from Bertram Chesleigh's lips.