Meanwhile, old Dinah watched her secluded nursling with unremitting vigilance. She could not remain with her all day, because her housekeeping duties took her constantly into the lower part of the house, but she visited her intermittently, and at night rolled herself in a thick counterpane and slept on the floor by the side of Golden's couch. She took the added precaution to turn the rusty key in the lock at night. Old Dinah had never heard the familiar adage that "love laughs at locksmiths." She was ordinarily a very sound and healthy sleeper. The mere accident of a rheumatic attack, and consequent sleeplessness, had caused her appearance the night Mr. Chesleigh had entered the room. Usually she might have been lifted, counterpane and all, and carried away bodily without being aware of it. Nearly two weeks after the night of her rencontre with Mr. Chesleigh, old Dinah awoke suddenly "in the dead waste and middle of the night," seized in the relentless grip of her old enemy, the rheumatism. She rolled herself out of her quilt and sat upright, groaning dolorously, and rubbing her knees in which the pain had settled. "Oh, Lordy! oh, Lordy!" she groaned, "how my ole bones does ache! Miss Golden! Miss Golden! my precious lam', wake up, and bid your ole brack mammy a las' far'well. I'm a-dyin', sartin, shuah!" But Golden, usually a very light sleeper, made no reply. Dinah reared her woolly head upward and looked into the bed. The bed was _empty_. Then Dinah looked around her in amazement to see if Golden was not in the room, laughing at her lugubrious groans as she had often done before. But she saw no trace of her young mistress. "Miss Golden! Miss Golden!" she called, "is you in de udder room? Ef you is, come in here! I'se berry sick, honey, almos' a-dyin'." But her repeated calls elicited no reply. It appeared that pretty Golden was out of sight and hearing. Suddenly old Dinah saw the dainty, white, ruffled night-dress, in which Golden had retired that night, lying in a snowy heap upon the floor. Dinah seized upon the garment and shook it vigorously, as if she expected to see the slight form of her young mistress drop from its folds to the floor. "Um--me-e-e," she groaned, "has de sperets carried de chile off?" She glanced up at the row of pegs where she had hung Golden's few articles of apparel. Her best dress--a dark-blue cashmere--was gone, also her hat and a summer jacket. "She hab runned away from us," old Dinah exclaimed, with almost a howl of despair. The thought inspired her with such grief and terror that she forgot her ailment entirely. She hobbled out from the room and made her way down stairs to her master's apartment and burst into his presence--a ludicrous object indeed in her striped cotton bed-gown. Old Hugh Glenalvan, late as it was, had not retired to bed. Wrapped in an old wadded dressing-gown he sat in an easy-chair before an old, carved oaken cabinet.