Chapter XXXVI

Little Golden stared at the closing door through which her father had vanished, with blank, terror-filled eyes. To have found him and lost him like this was too terrible.

She sat gazing before her like one dazed, with the angry words of her father still ringing in her ears, when a low and fluttering sigh recalled her to the fact of Mrs. Leith's presence which she had forgotten for the moment in her anguish of soul.

She looked around shrinkingly at the fair woman who had taken her mother's place, and her mother's name, dreading to meet a glance of scorn, even transcending that which her father had cast upon her.

Instead she met the beautiful, troubled eyes of her step-mother fixed upon her with tenderest pity.

Mrs. Leith had been vain, careless, and frivolous all her life. She had never known a care or sorrow in the whole course of her pleasant, prosperous existence.

The hard crust of selfishness and indifference had grown over the better impulses of a nature that at the core was true, and sweet, and womanly.

The last hour with its strange revelations had been the turning point in her life.

She realized with a shudder the dreadful position in which she was placed. She was married to a man who, in all probability, had a wife living.

It was possible that she herself was almost as much an outcast as the wretched girl who crouched weeping on the floor, homeless, friendless, and forsaken, in the hour of her direst need.

Never before had Mrs. Leith been brought face to face with a real sorrow. She gazed wonderingly upon poor little Golden, the course of whose checkered life had run as strangely as that of one of her favorite novel heroines.

So it happened that when Golden looked timidly up expecting to be immediately annihilated by her scornful glance, she met only the gentlest pity beaming from the large, blue eyes of the unhappy woman.

"Come to me, Golden," she said, and as the young girl advanced she asked her in a strangely saddened voice:

"Are you angry with me, child, that I have filled your mother's place and worn her name for twelve, long years?"

"No, I am not angry," Golden answered, gently. "It was through no fault of yours--you did not know."

"No, I did not know," Mrs. Leith murmured, putting her hands to her eyes while the tears fell through her fingers. "I did not know, and now it is too late."

"What shall you do now?" Golden asked her wonderingly.

"I shall go away," Mrs. Leith replied, sadly.

"Are you angry with my father?" asked the girl.

"No, Golden, he sinned ignorantly," replied Mrs. Leith. "Therefore I cannot blame him. But I must go away from him, and never see him again until he learns the truth whether or not his first wife was living when he married me."

Then there was a brief silence. The two women, so lately mistress and maid--now placed upon the same level by the equalizing hand of sorrow, sat still a little while looking out upon the unknown future with dreary, hopeless eyes. Then Mrs. Leith roused herself with an effort.

"And you, Golden--where will you go? What will you do?" she asked.

"God knows," the girl exclaimed, hopelessly. "I am so stunned by the revelations of to-day that I know not where to turn. For weary months the dream of finding and reclaiming my guilty mother has filled and occupied my thoughts. Now that I know her innocent and pure, the terrible mystery of her fate chills the blood in my veins. Where shall I look for her? How shall I find her?"

Mrs. Leith looked at her compassionately.

"Poor child!" she said. "You are too ill and weary to seek for anyone now. Leave that sorrowful quest to your father, and place yourself in my care."

The tears brimmed over in Golden's beautiful eyes at the kindly spoken words of her step-mother.

"Oh, madam," she cried, "you offer to befriend me. Then you do not believe that I am the lost and guilty creature they would fain make me out."

Mrs. Leith's beautiful face beamed with sympathy as she answered:

"No, Golden, I do not believe you are a sinner. I have a strong conviction that you are a deserted or discarded wife, and I will care for you in your forlorn situation with the tenderness of your own mother."