"I have but little more to say," she went on, smiling a little sadly, "and it is this: Golden is very weak and exhausted yet. She is not strong enough to bear the excitement of her mother's burial. I will remain here with her while they are bearing Mrs. Leith to the grave, and I will tell her your whole story. She shall hear how you came back here to seek her in two days after your ill-considered desertion of her, and found her gone. I will tell her how nobly you vindicated her honor beside her grave. She shall know that you forced John Glenalvan to reveal the hidden story of her mother's fate. When you come back I think she cannot fail to forgive you." "You will do all this for me?" he said, with a strange moisture in his eyes. "I cannot thank you sufficiently. You are an angel." "No, only a very faulty and sad-hearted woman," she replied, with a pensive sigh, and then they went back to the mourners. She kept her promise nobly. While they bore the poor remains of Richard Leith's first wife to the grave, his second wife sat with his daughter and tried to turn the swelling current of her grief by relating the story of Bertram Chesleigh's repentance and atonement. "Golden, if you could have heard his noble vindication of your honor beside your grave; how proudly he claimed you for his wife, and your child for his own, you could not fail to pity and forgive him for the one great error into which he was led by his own pride and John Glenalvan's evil counsel." "I have suffered so much through his fault," said the wronged wife, with mournful pathos. "Yes, dear, but you must show your own nobility of soul now," said the step-mother, gently. "You must remember: "'To err is human, To forgive divine.'" The beautiful, pale face grew very grave and troubled. "If only I could forget his cruelty," she said. "Ah, my friend, I was hurt so cruelly by that letter he sent me! I trusted him so fully. I believed in his truth as I believed in my God. I was almost maddened by the suddenness of my sorrow. Every word is branded upon my memory. See! I can repeat every sentence: "'Though it almost kills me to forsake you, Golden, I must go away. The disgrace of your birth is so terrible that I can never claim you for my wife. Pride and honor alike forbid it. You must see for yourself, poor child, that your terrible misfortune has wholly set you apart from the world, and as you have sworn to keep our private marriage a secret until I give you leave to reveal it, I must beg you to hold the story unspoken in your breast forever.'" She paused and looked at Mrs. Leith with a whole tragedy of sorrow in her violet orbs.