We must now return to Bernardine, dear reader.
"Oh, I was mad--mad to remain a single instant beneath this roof when I
discovered whose home it was!" she moaned, sinking down on the nearest
hassock and rocking herself to and fro in an agony of despair. "I--I
could have lived my life better if I had not looked upon his face again,
or seen the bride who had won his love from me. I will go, I will leave
this grand house at once. Let them feast and make merry. None of them
knows that a human heart so near them is breaking slowly under its load
of woe."
She tried to rise and cross the floor, but her limbs refused to act. A
terrible numbness had come over them, every muscle of her body seemed to
pain her.
"Am I going to be ill?" she cried out to herself in the wildest alarm.
"No, no--that _must not_ be; they would be sure to call upon _him_
to--to aid me, and that would kill me--yes, kill me!"
Her body seemed to burn like fire, while her head, her feet, and her
hands were ice cold. Her lips were parched with a terrible thirst.
"I must go away from here," she muttered. "If I am going to die, let it
be out in the grounds, with my face pressed close to the cold earth,
that is not more cold to me than the false heart of the man to whom I
have given my love beyond recall."
Like one whose sight had suddenly grown dim, Bernardine groped her way
from the magnificent _boudoir_ out into the corridor, her one thought
being to reach her own apartment, secure her bonnet and cloak, and get
out of the house. She had scarcely reached the first turn in the
corridor, ere she came face to face with a woman robed in costly satin,
and all ablaze with diamonds, who was standing quite still and looking
about her in puzzled wonder.
"I--I beg your pardon, miss," said the stranger, addressing Bernardine.
"I am a bit turned around in this labyrinth of corridors."
What was there in that voice that caused Bernardine to forget her own
sorrows for an instant, and with a gasp peer into the face looking up
into her own?
The effect of Bernardine's presence, as the girl turned her head and the
light of the hanging-lamp fell full upon it, was quite as electrifying
to the strange lady.
"Bernardine Moore!" she gasped in a high, shrill voice that was almost
hysterical. "Do my eyes deceive me, or is this some strange coincidence,
some chance resemblance, or are you Bernardine Moore, whom I have
searched the whole earth over to find?"
At the first word that fell from her excited lips, Bernardine recognized
Miss Rogers.
"Yes," she answered, mechanically, "I am Bernardine Moore, and you are
Miss Rogers. But--but how came you here, and in such fine dress and
magnificent jewels? You, whom I knew to be as poor as ourselves, when
you shared the humble tenement home with my father and me!"
Miss Rogers laughed very softly.
"I can well understand your bewilderment over such a Cinderella-like
mystery. The solution of it is very plain, however. But before I answer
your question, my dear Bernardine, I must ask what _you_ are doing
beneath this roof?"
"I am Mrs. Gardiner's paid companion," responded Bernardine, huskily.
"And I am Mrs. Gardiner's guest, surprising as that may seem. But let us
step into some quiet nook where we can seat ourselves and talk without
interruption," said Miss Rogers. "I have much to ask you about, and much
to tell you."
"Will you come to my apartment?" asked Bernardine.
The little old lady nodded, the action of her head setting all her
jewels to dancing like points of flame.
Bernardine led the way to the modestly furnished room almost opposite
Mrs. Gardiner's, and drawing forward a chair for her companion, placed
her in it with the same gentle kindness she had exhibited toward poor,
old, friendless Miss Rogers in those other days.
"Before I say anything, my dear," began Miss Rogers, "I want to know
just what took place from the moment you fled from your father's humble
home up to the present time. Did you--elope with any one?"
She saw the girl's fair face flush, then grow pale; but the dark, true,
earnest eyes of Bernardine did not fall beneath her searching gaze.
"I am grieved that you wrong me to that extent, Miss Rogers," she
answered, slowly. "No, I did not elope. I simply left the old tenement
house because I could not bear my father's entreaties to hurry up the
approaching marriage between the man I hated--Jasper Wilde--and myself.
The more I thought of it, the more repugnant it became to me.
"I made my way down to the river. I did not heed how cold and dark it
was. I--I took one leap, crying out to God to be merciful to me, and
then the dark waters, with the awful chill of death upon them, closed
over me, and I went down--down--and I knew no more.
"But Heaven did not intend that I should die then. I still had more
misery to go through; for that was I saved. I was rescued half
drowned--almost lifeless--and taken to an old nurse's home, where I lay
two weeks hovering between life and death.
"On the very day I regained consciousness, I learned about the terrible
fire that had wiped out the tenement home which I had known since my
earliest childhood, and that my poor, hapless father had perished in the
flames.
"I did my best to discover your whereabouts, Miss Rogers, at first
fearing you had shared my poor father's fate; but this fear proved to be
without foundation, for the neighbors remembered seeing you go out to
mail a letter a short time before the fire broke out.
"I felt that some day we should meet again, but I never dreamed that it
would be like this."
"Have you told me _all_, Bernardine?" asked Miss Rogers, slowly. "You
are greatly changed, child. When you fled from your home, you were but a
school-girl, _now_ you are a woman. What has wrought so great a change
in so short a time?"
"I can not tell you that, Miss Rogers," answered Bernardine,
falteringly. "That is a secret I must keep carefully locked up in my
breast until the day I die!" she said, piteously.
"I am sorry you will not intrust your secret to me," replied Miss
Rogers. "You shall never have reason to repent of any faith you place in
me."
"There are some things that are better left untold," sobbed Bernardine.
"Some wounds where the cruel weapons that made them have not yet been
removed. This is one of them."
"Is love, the sweetest boon e'er given to women, and yet the bitterest
woe to many, the rock on which you wrecked your life, child? Tell me
that much."
"Yes," sobbed Bernardine. "I loved, and was--cruelly--deceived!"
"Oh, do not tell me that!" cried Miss Rogers. "I can not bear it. Oh,
Heaven! that you, so sweet, and pure, and innocent, should fall a victim
to a man's wiles! 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.