Chapter XLIV

When Bertram Chesleigh came to full consciousness again he found himself lying on a couch in Mr. Leith's bedroom.

The curtains were drawn at the windows, but the light of the full day glimmered through, and he saw the grave-faced physician sitting beside him, while Richard Leith, from the bed opposite, regarded him with an intent expression. He struggled up feebly and pressed his hand to his brow.

"I have had a shock," he said, with an air of strange perplexity, as he looked into their anxious faces. "What was it? What has happened to me?"

"You have been near to death's door," replied the physician, gravely, "but you will recover now."

"I wish that I had died!" the young man burst out, with such passionate realization of his misery, that the doctor exclaimed, incautiously:

"So, then, you _did_ try to commit suicide?"

The brilliant, dark eyes looked at him in amazement.

"Suicide! suicide!" he repeated, blankly. "Who dares to say that of me?"

The doctor regarded him thoughtfully.

"My dear sir," he said, quietly, "I happened in here very opportunely last evening and found you suffering all the terrible symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Your friends feared that your grief had unhinged your mind, and that under temporary aberration you had attempted the destruction of your own life."

"They were wrong. I could never have been such a coward," Bertram answered, in such a tone of convincing truthfulness that no one could doubt him. "Indeed, doctor, you must have been mistaken. I have taken no drug recently."

"I am not mistaken," the physician asserted, confidently. "You had most certainly had arsenic administered to you in a draught of wine."

A startled gleam came into Mr. Chesleigh's eyes, his face whitened, a cry of horror came from his lips.

"Doctor, are you quite, quite sure?" he exclaimed.

"I would swear to the drug," was the instant reply. "Do you admit the wine?"

"Yes," came the grave reply; "I drank a glass of wine before coming in here yesterday evening, but I did not dream it was drugged," and an expression of almost incredulous horror swept over the handsome face.

"Who gave you the wine?" inquired the doctor and Richard Leith almost simultaneously.

But Bertram Chesleigh shook his head.

"Do not ask me," he said. "It is terrible, yet I will not betray my would-be destroyer."

"It was one of the Glenalvans," asserted Richard Leith, seeing the truth as by a flash of light.

"Do not ask me," the young man replied again. "I must not tell you. It is too terrible. I can scarce believe the dread reality myself."

But though he refused to reveal the secret, Richard Leith felt morally certain that it was to some of the family of John Glenalvan the young man owed the attempted destruction of his life. He had heard that Elinor had "set her cap" at him.

This, then, was the dreadful revenge she had taken for her disappointment.

The physician went away and left them together. Then the lawyer told his son-in-law his whole sad story. Bertram's indignation knew no bounds.

"May the curse of an offended God rest upon John Glenalvan's head!" he exclaimed. "It is to him and his family that my poor Golden owes the bitter sorrows of her brief life. My sister's maid, Celine, confessed that it was Elinor Glenalvan who discovered Golden's identity, and bribed her to send her away under a ban of disgrace. Oh, God, Leith, could I only have known that the girl little Ruby loved so dearly, and who shunned me so persistently, was my deserted wife, how joyously would I have taken her to my heart and claimed her for my own."

"Yes, if you had only known," Richard Leith replied, with mournful emphasis. "My poor young daughter, hers indeed was a hard lot. Scorned by her kindred, deserted by her husband, despised and disowned by her miserable father! How glad she must have been to creep into the kindly shelter of the grave! Ah, Heaven, Chesleigh, I never can forget my own wretched share in breaking that tender heart."

His head sank back on his pillow, and almost womanly tears coursed over his pale cheeks.

"But she forgave me before she died," he continued, pathetically, after a little. "She was an angel, Chesleigh. I can never forget how sweet and patient she was. The day before she died they carried me into her room. I lay on a couch by the side of her bed. They showed me the beautiful little waxen image--the babe that had never drawn a single breath of life in this world, and I could not keep from crying when they said her terrible fall had killed the child. The minister came, and told her that she must die in a few hours, too. But was it not strange, Chesleigh? She smiled sadly and shook her head."

"'No, you are all mistaken,' she said. 'I should not be sorry to die, but my time has not come yet. I cannot die until I know whether I shall meet my mother in Heaven, or whether she is still on earth.'

"But that night she passed away peacefully in her sleep. It was so calm and gradual we did not know when the end had come. It was like those sweet lines of Hood:

"'We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Went heaving to and fro.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.'"

He ceased, and there was a heavy silence in the room. Bertram Chesleigh broke it in a hushed, low voice.

"Poor, martyred child! Was she, then, so anxious to find her mother?"

"She declared that it was the one dream of her life-time," Richard Leith replied.

"And there is no clew save that which John Glenalvan holds?" inquired Bertram, thoughtfully.

"None, and the villain has fled. I do not believe his own wife and children know aught of his whereabouts."

A look of grave determination swept over Bertram's handsome, pallid face.

"Then I will take up the quest where it dropped from Golden's little hand in dying. I will track the villain, if it is to the end of the world. It shall be my task to vindicate her mother's memory," he said, gravely and earnestly.

"It is _my_ task rather," said Richard Leith.

"We will join hands in the effort," his son-in-law answered.

Old Dinah came in with a note for Mr. Leith. It was from Gertrude.

"I have gone away," she wrote. "I can leave you no address, but I
shall be cognizant of all that transpires at Glenalvan Hall, and I
may see you again ere long. You will soon be well enough to go about
again, and that you may be enabled to solve the distressing mystery
of your lost wife's fate, is the earnest prayer of

"GERTRUDE."

"Surely no man was ever placed in such a terrible position," said Richard Leith. "For aught I know, I may have two wives living."

"It is through no fault of yours," replied Mr. Chesleigh; "but it is most distressing. Your second wife appears to be a very beautiful and winning woman."

"She is both, but I never discovered her worth until it was too late to love her," Mr. Leith replied, sadly. "Her noble conduct to my helpless daughter first opened my eyes to her lovable character."

"God bless her!" Bertram Chesleigh uttered, fervently.

They had some further conversation, and then Mr. Chesleigh announced his intention of going away.

"I will not trespass further on Mr. Glenalvan's hospitality," he said decidedly. "I do not forget how much reason he has to hate the sight of me."