She loved her grandfather dearly, and the sight of his suffering stabbed her tender heart deeply. While she wept silently, old Dinah busied herself in anxious cares for the old man. He seemed frozen into a statue of despair, sitting with his head bowed forlornly, and his vacant eyes on the floor. But quite suddenly he roused himself and looked around him with a heavy, hopeless gaze. "Dinah, leave me alone," he said, with unwonted impatience. "I am not ill, or if I am it is with a sickness beyond mortal healing. Golden's disobedience and her cruel, undeserved reproaches have broken my heart." Golden threw herself impulsively at his feet again. "Grandpa, forgive me," she wailed. "I shall die if you do not say that you will pardon me!" He did not answer her. He only looked at his old black servant. "Dinah, you may leave us," he said, sorrowfully, "I had hoped to keep the secret all my life; but the time has come when I must reveal to my grandchild her mother's story." "Um-me-e e," groaned the old negress. "Sh, I t'ought it was a brack day when John Glenalvan kem here dat mornin' a-askin' ole massa to shut my pore chile up like a crim'nal." "Hush, Dinah," the old man repeated, pointing to the door. She went out, and Golden turned her beautiful eyes, like blue violets drowned in tears, upon his pale, drawn face. "Oh, grandpa," she cried, "you will tell me something of my mother at last. I have so longed to hear something of my mother and my father." A groan forced itself through Hugh Glenalvan's livid lips. "Your desire shall be gratified," he replied. "But the telling will cost you great sorrow, child." Her beautiful face grew white and scared. "Oh, grandpa," she cried, "then Elinor and Clare told the truth. My poor mother----" A bursting sob checked the rest of her speech. "Golden, before I tell you your mother's story, I must receive your own confession. Dinah has told me all the beginning of your acquaintance with my son's visitor. You must now give me the history of what further intercourse has passed between you. How comes it that my little Golden, whom I deemed so true and pure, broke her promise to old Dinah?" The beautiful face drooped from his gaze, overspread with warm, crimson blushes. No words came from the sweet, tremulous red lips. "A promise, child, no matter how humble the person to whom it is made, should be held perfectly sacred and inviolate," he continued. "I could not have believed that you, the child I had reared so carefully, could have been so ignoble as to falsify your promise." CHAPTER XI. Beautiful Golden sobbed wildly at the reproachful words of her grandfather. "Grandpa, I didn't mean it," she wept. "Indeed, indeed, I intended to keep my promise to black mammy. It was quite by accident that I broke it." "How could it have been by accident?" inquired the old man, incredulously. "Do you remember my habit of sleep-walking?" she inquired.