"You are mistaken," Richard Leith returned, gravely. "You do not understand her motives. I will tell you a harrowing secret, Desmond. I have discovered that that unfortunate girl is my own daughter!" In a few eloquent words he told Mr. Desmond the story of his strange marriage, and its tragic _denouement_--the lost wife, the ruined daughter. In his own despair and agitation, it did not seem strange to the lawyer that his excitement was reflected on the face of his listener, but when he had finished his story, Desmond sprang wildly to his feet, exclaiming: "Good God, Leith, I can lay my hand on the destroyer of your child. It is my wife's brother--it is Bertram Chesleigh!" "Heaven, how blind I have been!" Richard Leith exclaimed, with lurid eyes, and a deathly-pale face. CHAPTER XXXVIII. There was a moment's silence, then Mr. Leith said, huskily: "Tell me how this fact came to your knowledge, Desmond." "Do you remember the sudden trip my wife and I took to Florida last summer?" "Yes, I heard of it," the lawyer replied. "I will go back a few months previous to that trip." Mr. Desmond said. "It was this winter a year previous that Bertram Chesleigh made the acquaintance of young Frederick Glenalvan in New York and was invited by him to visit his far-away Floridian home. "About the first of last June Bert accepted the invitation, and spent about two weeks at Glenalvan Hall. "He wrote to my wife from there, hinting vaguely at having lost his heart to a perfect 'pearl of beauty.' "Edith, who is excessively proud, and mortally afraid of a _mesalliance_, replied to him coolly, discountenancing the idea and begging him not to marry out of his own state. "Between you and me, Leith, I believe she had a great heiress booked for the young fellow in New York." He paused for breath, but at Richard Leith's look of impatience, went on hastily: "Bertram did not reply to his sister's letter, but in the latter part of the same month Fred Glenalvan wrote us that Bertram was lying ill with brain fever. "We went to him at once and found him not expected to live, He was delirious, and through all his illness he called incessantly on one name. Morning, noon and night it was always, 'Golden, Golden, Golden.'" A groan forced itself through Richard Leith's rigid lips, but he did not speak, and Mr. Desmond continued: "That cry for Golden was always coupled with a wild appeal for forgiveness for some wrong, the nature of which we could not determine. "My curiosity and that of my wife were powerfully excited, and we wondered who the Golden was that he called upon, and why she never came. "It was quite evident that the Glenalvans did not care to divulge the secret, so we never presumed to ask, but when Bertram grew convalescent Edith inquired of him, and he told her the truth." "Let me hear it," said Richard Leith, gaspingly, while the knotted veins stood out like cords on his forehead.