“Mere newspaper stories, in which there was no truth,” he replied. “I was fancy free until I met Fair Fielding, and, having lost her, I do not believe I can ever love again. Our love was fate, as she said--a most cruel fate it seems now, yet the memory of our once happy love will stay with me forever.” His impetuous love, his despairing grief touched her very heart. In the light of his words, her repressed love and longing for the girl who had so bitterly deceived her surged again over her heart, and swept away like a rushing river all her resentment and indignation. She held out her hand suddenly to him, saying falteringly: “Bayard, I am sorry for my hardness to that unhappy girl. Only find her, and I will be the friend you desire for her while you defend her against the man she fears and hates.” CHAPTER XXIX. A WORKING GIRL’S WEDDING. In less than a year after Fair’s mysterious disappearance from New York, Waverley Osborne, whose admiration had been the indirect cause of all her trouble, was married to Sadie Allen. The telegram that had summoned Sadie Allen to the deathbed of her sister in Philadelphia was a fraudulent one, forged by Carl Bernicci, who had resorted to this means to remove from Fair the friend and protector to whom she clung with the desperation of despair. When she reached Philadelphia and found her sister perfectly well and greatly surprised at her coming, Sadie at once suspected the fraud that had been perpetrated upon her. “It is the work of Carl Bernicci, or of Belva Platt. They have taken this means to get me away, but I will foil them; I will go back at once to that poor child, whom they hope in this way to get into their power,” she said to her sister, to whom she had hastily related the whole story, and who, as glad as she was to see Sadie, would not press her to stay, lest harm should befall the fair young girl she had left. So Sadie, after spending but a few hours in Philadelphia, started back to New York, with her mind full of misgivings and fears. “I have been away from her one whole night, and it will be night again before I reach New York. Oh, may Heaven protect that poor girl until I get back to her side!” she thought anxiously. It was night, indeed, when she reached the great city, and a heavy thunderstorm was in progress. One moment the lightning flashed and made everything clear as noonday, the next the thunder’s peal and the downpour of torrents of rain made the scene one of Cimmerian darkness. Poor Sadie, without either waterproof cloak, gossamer, or umbrella, took her little satchel and stepped out into the rainy night amid the bawling troop of cabmen, intent on making her way to the nearest street car. She had not enough money to pay for a cab, or she would certainly have taken one, and saved herself a drenching, for in a minute her light summer dress was soaking wet.