"Gertrude," he said to her gently, "we have both been the victims of a terrible wrong. When I married you several years after the loss of my first wife, won by your beauty, which reminded me of my poor, little Golden's, I honestly believed that she was dead. There is some terrible mystery here, and John Glenalvan is at the bottom of it. But I will wring the truth from his false lips, and if my lost little Golden has come to harm at his hands, his life shall pay the penalty of his sin!" CHAPTER XXXV. "Oh, father," cried little Golden. "Why did you lure my poor mother from her home. She was so young, so trusting. Why did you persuade her to desert her parents?" The man's pale, handsome features quivered all over with vain remorse and penitence. "You do well to reproach me, little Golden," he sighed. "There is no excuse for my sin. But I will tell you how I came to act so imprudently. "I was a struggling young lawyer, poor and proud, when I first met your beautiful mother during a business trip to the south. Her family, though reduced to comparative poverty by the late war, were proud and aristocratic people, and I felt quite sure that they would have refused me the hand of their petted darling. "I had heard so much of the pride of the southerners that I was afraid to ask the Glenalvans for their beautiful child. So I acted the part of a coward and stole her from them. The dear girl loved me well, and went with me willingly when I promised to take her back to them after we were married. "I took her to New York, and made her my true and lawful wife, but so afraid was I of those haughty Glenalvans that I refused to allow her to write my name and address to her friends. I was waiting till I should have acquired a fame and fortune that would make me acceptable in their eyes. Oh, God, how terribly my sin has found me out after all these years." He paused and wiped away the cold dew that beaded his high, white brow. After a moment he went on, sadly: "I was fast gaining prominence and a competence in my profession, when some base enemy of mine--as a lawyer I had some of the blackest-hearted enemies that a man ever had--wrote my darling a letter, defaming me in scandalous terms, and averring that I had deceived her by a mock marriage. "Poor child, she was very simple and credulous. She fell an easy victim to the liar's tale. She fled from me, leaving that cruel letter behind her, the only thing there was to hint at the reason of her hurried flight." "Oh, if only you had followed her then," moaned beautiful Golden.