ome to my apartment?" asked Bernardine.

The little old lady nodded, the action of her head setting all her
jewels to dancing like points of flame.

Bernardine led the way to the modestly furnished room almost opposite
Mrs. Gardiner's, and drawing forward a chair for her companion, placed
her in it with the same gentle kindness she had exhibited toward poor,
old, friendless Miss Rogers in those other days.

"Before I say anything, my dear," began Miss Rogers, "I want to know
just what took place from the moment you fled from your father's humble
home up to the present time. Did you--elope with any one?"

She saw the girl's fair face flush, then grow pale; but the dark, true,
earnest eyes of Bernardine did not fall beneath her searching gaze.

"I am grieved that you wrong me to that extent, Miss Rogers," she
answered, slowly. "No, I did not elope. I simply left the old tenement
house because I could not bear my father's entreaties to hurry up the
approaching marriage between the man I hated--Jasper Wilde--and myself.
The more I thought of it, the more repugnant it became to me.

"I made my way down to the river. I did not heed how cold and dark it
was. I--I took one leap, crying out to God to be merciful to me, and
then the dark waters, with the awful chill of death upon them, closed
over me, and I went down--down--and I knew no more.

"But Heaven did not intend that I should die then. I still had more
misery to go through; for that was I saved. I was rescued half
drowned--almost lifeless--and taken to an old nurse's home, where I lay
two weeks hovering between life and death.

"On the very day I regained consciousness, I learned about the terrible
fire that had wiped out the tenement home which I had known since my
earliest childhood, and that my poor, hapless father had perished in the
flames.

"I did my best to discover your whereabouts, Miss Rogers, at first
fearing you had shared my poor father's fate; but this fear proved to be
without foundation, for the neighbors remembered seeing you go out to
mail a letter a short time before the fire broke out.

"I felt that some day we should meet again, but I never dreamed that it
would be like this."

"Have you told me _all_, Bernardine?" asked Miss Rogers, slowly. "You
are greatly changed, child. When you fled from your home, you were but a
school-girl, _now_ you are a woman. What has wrought so great a change
in so short a time?"

"I can not tell you that, M