he muttered to himself, "Oh, if I but dared tell her all, would she pity, or would she blame me?"
He loved the girl after his own fashion; but to save himself he was willing to sacrifice her. Poor Bernadine! Had she but known all!
CHAPTER XII
"I should think your own common sense would tell you. Surely you must have guessed what I am so eager to say, Miss Bernardine?" Jasper Wilde began, taking little heed of her father.
The girl's white lips opened, but no sound came from them. He was right; she quite expected it; but she did not tell him so.
"I might as well break right into the subject at once," he said. "My errand can be told in a few words. I have fallen deeply in love with your pretty face, and I am here to ask you to marry me. Mind, I say to marry me! What do you think of it?"
The girl drew back hurriedly.
"I think you might have guessed what my answer would have been, and thus saved yourself."
Again his face darkened, and an angry fire leaped into his eyes; but he controlled himself by a great effort.
"Why do you refuse me?" he asked. "I am a big catch, especially for a girl like you. Come, I have taken a notion to you, Bernardine, and that's saying a good deal."
"Spare yourself the trouble of uttering another word, Mr. Wilde," she said, with dignity. "I would not, I could not marry you under any circumstances. It is as well for you to know that."
"So you think now; but I fancy we can change all that; can't we, Moore?"
The old basket-maker's lips moved, but no sound came from them; the terror in his eyes became more apparent with each moment.
"I will never change my decision," said Bernardine.
Jasper Wilde drew his chair up nearer to the girl.
"Listen to me, Bernardine," he said. "You shall marry me, by all the gods above and all the demons below! I have never been thwarted in any wish or desire of my life. I shall not be thwarted in this!"
"You would not wish me to marry you against my will?" said the girl.
"That would make little difference to me," he rejoined. "You will like me well enough after you marry me; so never fear about that."
"I do not propose to marry you," replied Bernardine, rising haughtily from her seat. "While I thank you for the honor you have paid me, I repeat that I could never marry you."
"And I say that you shall, girl, and that, too, within a month from to-day," cried the other, in a rage.
"Oh, Bernardine, say 'Yes!'" cried the old man, trembling like an aspen leaf.
"I have never gone contrary to your wishes, father, in all my life," she said; "but in this instance, where my interests are so deeply concerned, I do feel that I must decide for myself."
With a horrible laugh, Jasper Wilde quitted the room, banging the door after him.
With a lingering look at the beautiful young face, her father bid her good-night, and with faltering steps quitted the little sitting-room and sought his own apartment. A little later, Bernardine was startled to hear him moaning and sobbing as though he were in great pain.
"Are you ill, father? – can I do anything for you?" she called, going quickly to his door and knocking gently.
"No," he answered in a smothered voice. "Go to your bed, Bernardine, and sleep. It is a great thing to be able to sleep – and forget."
"Poor papa!" sighed the girl, "how I pity him! Life has been very hard to him. Why are some men born to be gentlemen, with untold wealth at their command, while others are born to toil all their weary lives through for the meager pittance that suffices to keep body and soul together?"
She went slowly to her little room, but not to sleep. She crossed over to the window, sat down on a chair beside it, and looked up at the bit of starry sky that was visible between the tall house-tops and still taller chimneys, then down at the narrow deserted street so far below, and gave herself up to meditation.
"No, no; I could never marry Jasper Wilde!" she mused. "The very thought of it makes me grow faint and sick at heart; his very presence fills me with an indescribable loathing which I can not shake off. How differently the presence of Doctor Gardiner affects me! I – I find myself watching for his coming, and dreading the time when he will cease to visit papa."
Doctor Gardiner's coming had been to Bernardine as the sun to the violet. The old life had fallen from her, and she was beginning to live a new one in his presence.
As she sat by the window, she thought of the look the young doctor had given her at parting. The remembrance of it quickened the beating of her heart, and brought the color to her usually pale cheeks.
How different the young doctor was from Jasper Wilde! If the young doctor had asked her the same question Jasper Wilde had, would her answer have been the same?
The clock in an adjacent belfry slowly tolled the midnight hour. Bernardine started.
"How quickly the time has flown since I have been sitting here," she thought.
She did not know that it had been because her thoughts had been so pleasant. She heard a long-drawn sigh come from the direction of her father's room.
"Poor papa!" she mused; "I think I can guess what is troubling him so. He has spent the money we have saved for the rent, and fears to tell me of it. If it be so, Jasper Wilde, at the worst can but dispossess us, and we can find rooms elsewhere, and pay him as soon as we earn it. How I feel like making a confidant of Doctor Gardiner!"
Poor girl! If she had only done so, how much sorrow might have been spared her!
CHAPTER XIII
During the weeks Doctor Gardiner had been visiting the old basket-maker and thinking so much of his daughter, he had by no means neglected his patient, Miss Rogers, in whom he took an especial, almost brotherly, interest, and who rapidly recovered under his constant care, until at length he laughingly pronounced her "quite as good as new."
One day, in mounting the handsome brown-stone steps to make more of a social than a business call, he was surprised to see the mansion closed.
He felt quite grieved that his friend should have packed up and departed so hastily – that she had not even remembered to say good-bye to him. He felt all the more sorry for her absence just at this time, for, after much deliberation, he had decided to make a confidante of Miss Rogers, and pour into her kindly, sympathetic ear the whole of his unfortunate love story from beginning to end, and ask her advice as to what course he should pursue. He had also resolved to show her the last letter he had received from Miss Pendleton, in which she hinted rather strongly that the marriage ought to take place as soon as she returned to the city.
And now Miss Rogers was gone, he felt a strange chill, a disappointment he could hardly control, as he turned away and walked slowly down the steps and re-entered his carriage.
The next mail, however, brought him a short note from Miss Rogers. He smiled as he read it, and laid it aside, little dreaming of what vital importance those few carelessly-written lines would be in
