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                          The Golden Key

                                OR

                     A HEART’S SILENT WORSHIP


                     _By_ MRS. GEORGIE SHELDON

                             AUTHOR OF

             “Thrice Wedded,” “Little Miss Whirlwind,”
                  “The Magic Cameo,” “A Hoiden’s
                      Conquest,” “Mona,” etc.

                          [Illustration]


                        A. L. BURT COMPANY

                   PUBLISHERS           NEW YORK




POPULAR BOOKS

By MRS. GEORGIE SHELDON

In Handsome Cloth Binding

Price per Volume, 60 Cents

  Audrey’s Recompense
  Brownie’s Triumph
  Churchyard Betrothal, The
  Dorothy Arnold’s Escape
  Dorothy’s Jewels
  Earl Wayne’s Nobility
  Edrie’s Legacy
  Esther, the Fright
  Faithful Shirley
  False and The True, The
  For Love and Honor
  Sequel to Geoffrey’s Victory
  Forsaken Bride, The
  Geoffrey’s Victory
  Girl in a Thousand, A
  Golden Key, The
  Grazia’s Mistake
  Heatherford Fortune, The
  Sequel to The Magic Cameo
  He Loves Me For Myself
  Sequel to the Lily of Mordaunt
  Helen’s Victory
  Her Faith Rewarded
  Sequel to Faithful Shirley
  Her Heart’s Victory
  Sequel to Max
  Heritage of Love, A
  Sequel to The Golden Key
  His Heart’s Queen
  Hoiden’s Conquest, A
  How Will It End
  Sequel to Marguerite’s Heritage
  Lily of Mordaunt, The
  Little Marplot, The
  Little Miss Whirlwind
  Lost, A Pearle
  Love’s Conquest
  Sequel to Helen’s Victory
  Love Victorious, A
  Magic Cameo, The
  Marguerite’s Heritage
  Masked Bridal, The
  Max, A Cradle Mystery
  Mona
  Mysterious Wedding Ring, A
  Nameless Dell
  Nora
  Queen Bess
  Ruby’s Reward
  Shadowed Happiness, A
  Sequel to Wild Oats
  Sibyl’s Influence
  Stella Roosevelt
  That Dowdy
  Thorn Among Roses, A
  Sequel to a Girl in a Thousand
  Threads Gathered Up
  Sequel to Virgie’s Inheritance
  Thrice Wedded
  Tina
  Trixy
  True Aristocrat, A
  True Love Endures
  Sequel to Dorothy Arnold’s Escape
  True Love’s Reward
  Sequel to Mona
  True to Herself
  Sequel to Witch Hazel
  Two Keys
  Virgie’s Inheritance
  Wedded By Fate
  Welfleet Mystery, The
  Wild Oats
  Winifred’s Sacrifice
  Witch Hazel
  With Heart so True
  Sequel to His Heart’s Queen
  Woman’s Faith, A
  Sequel to Nameless Dell


For Sale by all Booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price

                  A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
           52 Duane Street                      New York


                    Copyright 1896, 1897, 1905
                         BY STREET & SMITH

                          THE GOLDEN KEY




THE GOLDEN KEY.




PROLOGUE.

A RESPONSIVE HEART.


“Nannie, I cannot bear it!”

“Hush, Alice; you must not give way to such wild grief--the
excitement will be very bad for you.”

“But what will Adam say? It will be a terrible blow; his heart was
so set upon the fulfilment of his hopes, and now----”

A heart-broken wail completed the sentence as the pale, beautiful
woman, resting upon the snowy pillows of an old-fashioned canopied
bed, covered her face with her delicate hands and fell to sobbing
with a wild sorrow which shook her slight frame from head to foot.

“Alice! Alice! don’t! Adam will come home to find that he has lost
both wife and child if you do not try to control yourself.”

The latter speaker, a tall, muscular woman, with a kindly but
resolute face, which bespoke a strong character as well as a
tender heart, knelt beside the bed, and laid her cheek against
the colorless one upon the pillow with motherly tenderness and
sympathy. But her appealing words only seemed to increase the
violence of the invalid’s grief, and, with a look of anxiety
sweeping over her countenance, the woman arose, after a moment,
when, pouring a few drops from a bottle into a spoon, she briefly
informed her charge that it was time for her medicine.

The younger woman meekly swallowed the potion, although her bosom
continued to heave with sobs, and tears still rained over her
hueless cheeks.

Her companion sat down near her, an expression of patient endurance
on her face, and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes she was
rewarded by seeing the invalid fall into a profound slumber.

“Thank Heaven!” she muttered at last, with a sigh of relief, “there
will be an interval of rest, but I dread the awakening.”

Miss Nancy Porter was a spinster, upward of forty, and one of those
stanch, reliable women who always seem like a bulwark of strength,
and equal to any emergency.

She was, by profession, a trained nurse, having, many years
previous, served her time in the Massachusetts General Hospital,
of Boston, after which her experience was wide and varied, winning
for herself encomiums from both surgeons and physicians, and the
unbounded confidence of those who were fortunate enough to secure
her services in the sick-room.

She had her own home in one of the suburban towns of Boston, where
she lived with her one trusty maid in a quiet, restful way, when
her services were not in demand elsewhere.

It was into this peaceful home that her only sister had come,
about a month previous, to remain until the return of her husband,
who had been called abroad upon urgent business.

Adam Brewster was a wealthy banker of New York City.

He was several years older than sweet Alice Porter, whom he had met
and fallen in love with some two years previous, and who had been
his idolized wife for little more than twelve months.

It had been a great trial that he could not take his dear one to
Europe with him; but her physician utterly prohibited such a trip
for the young wife, and thus she had gone to spend the interval
of her husband’s absence with her sister, in the home of her
childhood, and where a tiny little girl was born into the world,
only to breathe faintly for a few moments, and them slip away into
the great unknown.

For hours after the birth and death of her little one, Alice
Brewster had lain in a state of unconsciousness, which caused the
heart of her faithful nurse and sister to quake with fear.

But, when consciousness returned, and the youthful mother called
for her little one, and she was obliged to tell her that she was
childless, her heart almost failed her again, in view of the bitter
disappointment and violent sorrow which once more threatened to
snap the slender thread of life.

She could only temporarily quell these outbursts of grief by
administering powerful narcotics to induce sleep and oblivion, with
the hope that calmness and resignation would come with returning
strength.

On the afternoon of the third day the storm, which had prevented
the sending of a doctor, cleared, and about five o’clock Miss
Porter went down-stairs into the kitchen, where her servant was
quietly engaged with her domestic duties.

“Sarah, I’m going to town to see Doctor Bowman,” she remarked, in
grave, subdued tones, an anxious expression in her mild, gray eyes.
“Mrs. Brewster is sleeping, but I want you to go up and sit by her
until I return, which won’t be very long, and if she wakes, give
her two teaspoonfuls of the medicine in the glass that is on the
mantel.”

“Yes, marm,” responded Sarah, as she changed her calico apron for a
white one, preparatory to going up-stairs.

“And--if any one comes in,” pursued Miss Porter thoughtfully,
“tell them nothing! you can simply say I am out, and Mrs. Brewster
is lying down. I don’t want any gossip started. I’ll tell my own
story.”

“Yes, marm,” said Sarah again, and her mistress hurried away.

She was just in time to catch the five-twenty express for town,
where she arrived just on the stroke of six, when she proceeded
directly to the waiting-room to leave her waterproof and umbrella
with the woman in charge, while she made a visit to her physician.

She did not find her in the outer room, and so went on into the
ladies’ private siting-room, which she found to be empty, quite an
unusual occurrence, although doubtless the recent tempest was the
reason why so few people were abroad.

At least Miss Porter thought the place was empty, until a faint
sound greeted her ear, when she started forward and peeped around
a corner, to find only an animated bundle wrapped in a gray shawl
lying upon the great square table standing there.

“It’s a baby!” muttered Miss Porter in astonishment, “but where on
earth is the mother?”

Prompted by both curiosity and interest, she went to the child,
and, parting the shawl, which was closely wrapped about it,
discovered an infant, which her practised eye told her could not be
over a week old, if, indeed, it had seen as many days as that.

Her first thought was that the mother, or whoever had the child in
charge, had left it just for the moment sleeping upon the table;
then, suddenly, a terrible shock, which set every nerve in her body
quivering with a painful thrill, went through her as she caught
sight of a note that had been pinned to the fine flannel blanket
that was wrapped about the infant under the shawl.

“Good heavens! it is an abandoned baby!” she breathed, as she
mechanically but tenderly gathered it into her strong arms and
tried to hush it upon her breast.

Evidently, the child had been drugged, for it dropped off to sleep
almost immediately, and then Miss Porter, with trembling fingers
and two scarlet spots upon her cheeks, denoting great mental
excitement, detached the note from the blanket, and, opening it,
read:

   “Will some kind woman take this child, or see that it finds
  a good home where it will be well reared? Nothing but direst
  necessity compels her abandonment. She is well and honorably
  born, and yet relentless fate makes her an outcast from her own
  kindred. A peculiar-shaped golden key, in the form of a pin, is
  fastened to her clothing--it is her only heritage. Will whoever
  responds to this appeal insert in an early issue of the Boston
  _Transcript_ under the head of personals, the following: ‘X. Y.
  Z.--The golden key has unlocked a responsive heart,’ and relieve
  the writer of this of a heavy burden?”

“H’m!” ejaculated Miss Porter, as she refolded the note, and began
to look for the golden key.

She found it pinned to the yoke of the child’s dainty dress--an
oddly fashioned trinket, the thumb-piece ornamented with a small
<DW29>, in the heart of which there flashed a tiny but flawless
diamond.

“Well! for once I have had a genuine adventure in my plodding,
practical life!” the woman muttered to herself. “Everything about
this child shows that she was born of a wealthy mother--some rich
girl, maybe, whose good name was more to her than the life and
welfare of her own flesh and blood. Oh, dear, what a world it is!
Those who yearn for these little ones are deprived of them, while
there is no place, no love for others. It is a beautiful babe,
too,” she continued, bending over the little sleeper and noting
the soft, curling rings of glossy brown hair on the small head,
the delicate, regular features of the little face, and the dainty,
perfect hands that were folded on the gently heaving breast. “Poor
little waif! what shall I do with you?” she concluded, with a
long-drawn, regretful sigh.

Then she sat suddenly erect, her face becoming almost as rigid as
that of a statue, while she scarcely seemed to breathe, so absorbed
had she become in her own startled reflections.

“Nancy Porter, I wonder if you could manage it?--I wonder if you
dare do it?” she breathed at last, with lips in which there was not
an atom of color. “Alice would never survive another such tax upon
her delicate constitution; Adam Brewster would never be content
without an heir to his great fortune. Well, I’m going to try it,
and save her heart from breaking.”

With a resolute gleam in her gray eyes, a settled purpose in every
line of her strong, honest face, she began to wrap the child in
the soft, warm shawl which she had partially removed, paying no
attention to the woman in charge--who at that moment came into the
room and began to busily brandish a great feather duster--although
she was uncomfortably conscious that she was being regarded with a
curious, questioning glance.

But Miss Nancy Porter had run many a difficult gauntlet, and faced
many emergencies, during her checkered life, and her stanch heart
and brave front did not fail her now.

Having arranged everything about her charge to her satisfaction,
she arose and deliberately walked from the room, passed out of the
nearest door of the one beyond, and, joining the hurrying crowd
that surging toward the outward-bound trains, without giving
another thought to the errand which had brought her to town, found
herself just in season to board a return local.

She did not see in the car a person whom she knew; yet, knowing
that there might be acquaintances on the train, she decided to
leave it at a station two miles below her own town, and about a
mile and a half from her home, which was located between the two
villages.

It was dark when she alighted, and it was with a deep sigh of
satisfaction that she slipped away in the gloom.

She did not meet a single person on the way--it was a lonely road,
with only a few scattered farmhouses to be passed--and arrived
at her own door just as the old-fashioned clock of a previous
generation standing in the hall solemnly tolled off the hour of
eight.

A glance in at the kitchen window as she passed had told her that
Sarah was still upstairs with her patient, and, passing softly
around to the front door, which she noiselessly opened with a
latchkey, she walked through the “best room” to the “parlor
bedroom,” where she laid her charge upon the bed, thankful for the
potency of the drug which still held its senses locked in slumber,
and glad to have her aching arms relieved of their burden.

Then, closing both doors after her, she passed up-stairs to the
sick-room, removing her bonnet and wrap as she went, when she
dismissed Sarah to her interrupted work in the kitchen below, and
then sat down to rest and await the awakening of the frail sleeper
upon the bed.

An hour later, Miss Porter suddenly appeared in her bright,
cheerful kitchen, bearing a beautiful babe in her arms, while a
tender expression seemed to have softened and illumined her usually
grave, almost austere face.

“Goodness sakes, alive!” exclaimed Sarah, springing to her feet,
with a startled air, her wild eyes fastened upon the infant.

“Hush!” said Miss Porter authoritatively. “Has any one been here
since I left home?”

“Not a soul,” said the girl, but with still gaping eyes and mouth.

“Good!” returned the mistress in a satisfied tone; “and now, Sarah,
you are to remember that a baby girl was born here on Monday night,
October 2. No one save you and I and Mrs. Brewster know of the fact
as yet; but I shall have it recorded to-morrow morning, when a
letter will also be mailed to Mr. Brewster, announcing that he has
a fine little daughter.”

“But----” began Sarah, looking dazed and troubled.

“There are no ‘buts,’ Sarah,” curtly interposed Miss Porter;
“the last forty-eight hours must become a blank; you are to know
nothing, except that on the second of this month my sister gave
birth to a beautiful little girl