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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