"Let me tell you how the case stands. I will utter the shameful truth for you if you dare not admit it. He is _your lover_ in secret, though he would deny you in public!" Hapless Bernardine had borne all she could; and without a word, a cry, or even a moan she threw up her little hands, and fell in a lifeless heap at her cruel enemy's feet. For a moment Sally Pendleton gazed at her victim, and thoughts worthy of the brain of a fiend incarnate swept through her. "If she were only dead!" she muttered, excitedly. "Dare I----" The sentence was never finished. There was a step on the creaking stairs outside, and with a guilty cry of alarm, Miss Pendleton rushed from the room and out into the darkened hall-way. She brushed past a woman on the narrow stairs, but the darkness was so dense neither recognized the other; and Sally Pendleton had gained the street and turned the nearest corner, ere Miss Rogers--for it was she--reached the top landing. As she pushed open the door, the first object that met her startled eyes was Bernardine lying like one dead on the floor. Despite the fact that she was an invalid, Miss Rogers' nerves were exceedingly cool. She did not shriek out, or call excitedly to the other inmates of the house, but went about reviving the girl by wetting her handkerchief with water as cold as it would run from the faucet, and laving her marble-cold face with it, and afterward rubbing her hands briskly. She was rewarded at length by seeing the great dark eyes slowly open, and the crimson tide of life drift back to the pale, cold cheeks and quivering lips. A look of wonder filled Bernardine's eyes as she beheld Miss Rogers bending over her. "Was it a dream, some awful dream?" she said, excitedly, catching at her friend's hands and clinging piteously to them. "What caused your sudden illness, Bernardine?" questioned Miss Rogers, earnestly. "You were apparently well when I left you an hour since." Still Bernardine clung to her with that awful look of agony in her beautiful eyes, but uttering no word. "Has she gone?" she murmured, at length. "Has _who_ gone?" questioned Miss Rogers, wondering what she meant. "The beautiful, pitiless stranger," sobbed Bernardine, catching her breath. Miss Rogers believed that the girl's mind was wandering, and refrained from further questioning her. "The poor child is grieving so over this coming marriage of hers to Jasper Wilde that I almost fear her mind is giving way," she thought, in intense alarm, glancing at Bernardine. As she did so, Bernardine began to sob again, breaking into such a passionate fit of weeping, and suffering such apparently intense grief, that Miss Rogers was at a loss what to do or say. She would not tell why she was weeping so bitterly; no amount of questioning could elicit from her what had happened. Not for worlds would Bernardine have told to any human being her sad story--of the stranger's visit and the startling disclosures she had made to her.