marry him instead of the other one."

"But supposing the young girl that he--my friend--is betrothed to
refuses to give him up, what then?"

"I might see her," replied Sally, "and talk with her."

"It is hard for him to marry her, when every throb of his heart is for
another," answered Jay Gardiner, despondently.

"Who is this young girl who is so beautiful that she has won the love of
both these lovers?" she asked in a low, hard voice.

"Bernardine---- Ah! I should not tell you that," he responded,
recollecting himself. But he had uttered, alas! the one fatal
word--Bernardine.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"I can never rest night or day until I have seen this Bernardine and
swept her from my path!" she cried.

She made up her mind that she would not tell her mother or Louisa just
yet. It would worry her mother to discover that she had a rival, while
Louisa--well, she was so envious of her, as it was, she might exult in
the knowledge.

But how should she discover who this beautiful Bernardine was of whom he
spoke with so much feeling?

Suddenly she stopped short and brought her two hands together, crying,
excitedly:

"Eureka! I have found a way. I will follow up this scheme, and see what
I can find out. Jay Gardiner will be out of the city for a few days. I
will see his office attendant--he does not know me--and will never be
able to recognize me again the way I shall disguise myself, and I will
learn from him what young lady the doctor knows whose name begins with
Bernardine. It is not an ordinary name, and he will be sure to remember
it, I am confident, if he ever heard it mentioned."

It was an easy matter for Sally to slip out of the house early the next
day without attracting attention, although she was dressed in her
gayest, most stunning gown.

Calling a passing cab, she entered it, and soon found herself standing
before Jay Gardiner's office, which she lost no time in entering.

A young and handsome man, who sat at a desk, deeply engrossed in a
medical work, looked up with an expression of annoyance on his face at
being interrupted; but when he beheld a most beautiful young lady
standing on the threshold, his annoyance quickly vanished, and a bland
smile lighted up his countenance. He bowed profoundly, and hastened to
say:

"Is there anything I can do for you, miss?"

"I want to see Doctor Gardiner," said Sally, in her sweetest, most
silvery voice. "Are you the doctor?"

"No," he answered, with