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Oh, tell me, Bernardine, that I have not heard aright!" Miss Rogers was so overcome by Bernardine's story, that she could not refrain from burying her face in her hands and bursting into tears as the girl's last words fell on her startled ear.
I have now several letters from a wealthy woman residing at Lee, Massachusetts. She wants a companion; some one who will be willing to stay in a grand, gloomy old house, content with the duties allotted to her." Bernardine's face fell; there was a look of disappointment in her dark eyes. "I had hoped to get something to do in the city," she faltered.
A sharp pain, like that caused by a dagger's thrust, seemed to flash through Bernardine's heart as those words fell upon her startled ear. "What has happened to your master, John?" she asked, huskily; and her voice sounded terribly unnatural. In a voice husky with emotion the groom explained to her what was occurring how young Mrs.
Catharina had returned to her knitting, and began working, and, as before, not noticing any one. But Bernardine sat by her side, playing with the cat, and after a time Catharina looked up at Bernardine's little thin face, and, after some hesitation, stroked it gently with her hand. "Fräulein is not strong," she said tenderly. "If Fräulein lived here, I should take care of her."
Then began the goodbyes, and the preparations for the return journey. Bernardine bent over Catharina, and kissed her sad face. "Fräulein will come again?" she whispered eagerly. And Bernardine promised. There was something in Bernardine's manner which had won the poor girl's fancy: some unspoken sympathy, some quiet geniality.
What are you doing here now you of all other women?" "Come with me quietly into the other room and I will tell you how it happens that I am here in his home," whispered Bernardine, huskily. "No," she shrieked, laughing a hard, jeering, terrible laugh in Bernardine's white, pain-drawn face as she battled fiercely to shake off the doctor's hold of her pinioned arms.
"There was a friend to whom in the first days of my trouble I turned for sympathy. When others only irritated, she could soothe. She had only to come into my room, and all was well with me." There were tears in Bernardine's eyes as she spoke. "Well," said the Disagreeable Man kindly, "and where is your genius now?"
And then the truth came out: his marriage to Bernardine was legal and binding before God and man, and that, directly after he had left her on the day of the ceremony, he had met with an accident which completely obliterated the event from his mind; even all remembrance of Bernardine's existence. "What, then, is poor Sally?" cried his mother, in horror.
You are to remain here, in my charge, under my eye, until well, until the person who brought you here says you may go." Bernardine's dark eyes flashed; she looked amazed. "Do you mean to infer that I am to be detained here against my will?" demanded the girl. "That is as you choose to look at it, miss.
There was no commotion outside; evidently the neighbors had not heard of Bernardine's disappearance, and he doubted whether or not her father knew of it yet. Jay Gardiner had barely stepped from the pavement into the dark and narrow hall-way ere he found himself face to face with Jasper Wilde.
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