s rounds, he never noticed the letter pressed securely against the
side down in the furthermost corner.

Sitting anxiously awaiting a response to her missive, or her young
friend to come in person, Miss Rogers watched and waited for Jay
Gardiner, or any tidings of him, in vain.

Meanwhile, the preparations for the obnoxious marriage which she seemed
unable to prevent went steadily on.

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-look