"If I only had!" he echoed. "My first impulse was to do so; but I had on hand a very important case, which I had staked everything on winning. If I managed it well my success was assured as one of the leading lawyers of the day. My speech for the defense was anticipated anxiously by many. So I suffered my ambition to overrule my first instinctive resolve to follow my wife, and instead I wrote to her brother. He sent me that lying letter that almost broke my heart." He broke down and sobbed like a woman, or rather, unlike a woman, for those great, convulsive moans of agony that issued from his breast seemed as if they would rend his heart in twain. Golden stole to his side and laid her small hand kindly on his gray head, that was bowed in sorrow and remorse. "I am sorry for you, my father," she said. "You have been weak and imprudent, but not sinful, as I thought. But, oh, my poor mother! My heart is torn over her wretched fate. She must have perished miserably, or we should have heard from her ere now. Oh, father, what shall we do?" They looked at each other with dim, miserable eyes, this strangely reunited father and daughter, the awful mystery of the wife and mother's fate chilled their hearts. He took her hand and drew her gently nearer to him. "My child, I shall go to Glenalvan Hall and confront John Glenalvan with his sin. I believe the whole key to the mystery lies in that villain's hands." "I am almost sure of it," she replied. "He hated my mother, and he hated me. I will go with you. What joy it will be to stand up proudly before him and tell him that my birth was honest and honorable, and that my father is a good and true man, who is glad to see me, for you _are_ glad, aren't you?" she asked him, pleadingly. "Yes, dear, I am very glad. I have always longed to have a child of my own to love. It seemed as if my heart was always yearning for the daughter I believed to be dead. But Golden," he looked at her anxiously and pleadingly as he clasped her little hand, "you have a story of your own to tell me before we go on the quest for your mother. The great mystery of love has come to you already in your tender youth. Tell me, my daughter, are you a wife?" The crimson color flushed into her cheeks, then receded, leaving her deathly pale again. Tears rose into the great, blue eyes, and trembled on the long-fringed lashes. Her lips parted and closed again without a sound. "Tell me, Golden," he urged, anxiously; "are you a wife, or has some artful villain deceived you? If so----" he clenched his hand, and the lightnings of passion flashed from his somber, dark eyes. A moan of pain came from the girl's white lips. "Oh, father, I cannot tell you now," she sighed. "Only trust me. Do not believe me vile and wicked. Perhaps I may be able to tell you the truth some day." As she spoke, some strange, new light flashed into his mind. She saw the startled gleam flash into his eyes.