All the long nights through Bernardine would weep and moan and wring her little white hands. When Miss Rogers attempted to expostulate with her, declaring no one could compel her to marry Jasper Wilde against her will, she would only shake her head and cry the more bitterly, moaning out that she did not understand. "I confess, Bernardine, I do not understand you," she declared, anxiously. "You will not try to help yourself, but are going willingly, like a lamb to the slaughter, as it were." David Moore seemed to be as unnerved as Bernardine over the coming marriage. If he heard a sound in Bernardine's room at night, he would come quickly to her door and ask if anything was the matter. He seemed to be always awake, watching, listening for something. The next day he would say to Miss Rogers: "I was sorely afraid something was happening to Bernardine last night--that she was attempting to commit suicide, or something of that kind. A girl in her highly nervous state of mind will bear watching." "Your fears on that score are needless," replied Miss Rogers. "No matter whatever else Bernardine might do, she would never think of taking her life into her own hands, I assure you." But the old basket-maker was not so sure of that. He had a strange presentiment of coming evil which he could not shake off. Each evening, according to his declared intention, Jasper Wilde presented himself at David Moore's door. "There's nothing like getting my bride-to-be a little used to me," he declared to her father, with a grim laugh. Once after Jasper Wilde had bid Bernardine and her father good-night, he walked along the street, little caring in which direction he went, his mind was so preoccupied with trying to solve the problem of how to make this haughty girl care for him. His mental query was answered in the strangest manner possible. Almost from out the very bowels of the earth, it seemed--for certainly an instant before no human being was about--a woman suddenly appeared and confronted him--a woman so strange, uncanny, and weird-looking, that she seemed like some supernatural creature. "Would you like to have your fortune told, my bonny sir?" she queried in a shrill voice. "I bring absent ones together, tell you how to gain the love of the one you want----" "You do, eh?" cut in Jasper Wilde, sharply. "Well, now, if you can do anything like that, you ought to have been able to have retired, worth your millions, long ago, with people coming from all over the world to get a word of advice from you." "I care nothing for paltry money," replied the old woman, scornfully. "I like to do all the good I can." "Oh, you work for nothing, then? Good enough. You shall tell me my fortune, and how to win the love of the girl I care for. It will be cheap advice enough, since it comes free."