She loved the old negress dearly. Under that homely black breast beat the only heart that had ever given a mother's love to the beautiful, forsaken child of poor, wronged and misguided little Golden. Then with a lingering, loving, backward glance around, the girl left the room and proceeded to her grandfather's apartment. The kind old man was asleep with a look of care and anxiety deeply imprinted on his pale, worn features. Golden pressed her trembling lips to the thin, gray locks that straggled over the pillow, and her girlish tears fell on them, shining like jewels in the dim gleam of the night-lamp. Then Golden stole away noiselessly. There was one more farewell to be said ere she set forth on the mission whose only clew lay in the crumpled card hidden away securely in the little purse of gold. She knelt down on the banks of the tranquil little lake she had always loved so dearly, and clasped her little hands and lifted her white face in the bright moonlight. "Farewell, little lake," she murmured to the silvery, tranquil sheet of water. "I pray God that the time may come when I shall kneel by you again, and tell you that I have reclaimed my erring mother, and that her soul has been washed as pure and free from sin as the lilies sleeping on your breast." Was it only little Golden's excited fancy, or did a shadow, soft and impalpable as a mist wreath, and pale as the moonbeams, glide across the still water in the form of a woman, and a voice as soft and low as the sigh of the breeze murmur sadly: "Bless you, my daughter." She started and looked around; the voice and vision had been so real she could hardly imagine it fancy, but the phantom shape had dissolved into moonbeams again, and the voice had melted into music on the "homeless winds." "If my poor mother was dead I should believe that her spirit had blessed me," said the beautiful girl to herself. "But she is alive, so it could not have been she, perhaps it was my guardian angel." She plucked a beautiful, large, white lily from the lake and started on her way to the railway station, carrying the spotless flower in her hand. Perhaps some thought of the poet, Longfellow's, verses came to her mind: "Bear a lily in thine hand, Gates of brass cannot withstand One touch of that magic wand, Bear through sorrow, wrong and ruth, On thy lips the smile of truth, In thy heart the dew of youth." CHAPTER XV. We will return to Bertram Chesleigh, little Golden's recreant lover. All of John Glenalvan's influence had been brought to bear on the proud young man to induce him to relinquish his pursuit of the beautiful girl whose acquaintance he had so strangely and imprudently formed. Mr. Chesleigh's own pride of birth, united to John Glenalvan's artful innuendoes, was a powerful ally in the young man's mind against his love for the lonely and beautiful little girl.