"I feel fearfully ill," said Chesleigh, staggering unsteadily, and putting his hand to his head. "I need something, but do not ask me to accept the shelter of your roof, Fred. I have a quarrel with your father. He has bitterly deceived me, and must answer to me for his sin. "Father is not at home. He has been absent for several days," said Fred, confusedly. "But if you will not come up to the hall sit down here on this bench, and I will bring you some wine." Bertram obeyed his request almost mechanically. His head ached, and he felt dull, lifeless and inert. The grief and excitement under which he had labored for several days were beginning to tell heavily upon his overstrained nerves. With the murmured name of Golden, his head drooped on his breast and he relapsed into semi-unconsciousness. He was aroused by a hand lifting his head, and starting into consciousness, saw Frederick Glenalvan by his side, and Elinor standing before him with a small tray on which were arranged a glass of wine and several slices of cake. He did not notice how white and strange she looked, nor how steely her voice sounded as she said: "You are faint and ill. Drink this--it will revive you." She put the wine to his lips, and he drank it thirstily. A fire seemed to run through his veins, new life came into his limbs. He arose and thanked her, but refused the cake. "I am better, but I cannot eat; it would choke me," he said, and Elinor did not press him. She turned away, and as she passed the lake she furtively tossed the wine-glass in, and the cake after it. "So father had deceived him, and must answer to him for his sin," she said to herself, bitterly, as she walked along. "Well, well, we shall see! Oh, how I hate him! Yet once I loved him, and hoped to be his wife. I might have been if that little jade had never come between. Oh, how I hate her even in her grave!" She went back to the hall, walking like one in a dream, with lurid, blazing eyes, and a face blanched to the pallor of a marble image, muttering wickedly to herself. CHAPTER XLIII. When Elinor had gone, Frederick Glenalvan turned curiously to Chesleigh. "So you were really the husband of Golden Leith, and not her betrayer, as everybody believed?" he said. "Yes, she was my lawful wife; but why do you call her Golden Leith?" Bertram Chesleigh inquired, curiously. "Did you not know," said Fred, carelessly, "that she had found her father? He is a New York lawyer, and his name is Richard Leith. It seems that her mother was really married to him after all." "Thank God! Then there is really not a shadow of disgrace upon my poor, wronged wife," cried Bertram Chesleigh, gladly. "Oh, God! if only she had lived." He was silent a moment, then asked, suddenly: "Where is Richard Leith now?" "He is lying ill in the western wing of Glenalvan Hall," Frederick replied, with some embarrassment at the inward consciousness of who caused that illness.