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!"