eak to me, Bernardine?" he wailed out, sharply. "Your
silence is more than I can bear. For God's sake, speak!"

CHAPTER XIV.

"HAVE I BROKEN YOUR HEART, MY DARLING?"

Bernardine Moore slowly untwined her white arms from about her father's
neck, and turned her white, anguished face toward him, and the awful
despair that lay in the dark eyes that met his was more piteous than any
words could have been.

"Have I broken your heart, Bernardine?" he cried out. "Oh, my child, my
beautiful Bernardine, have I ruined your life by that fatal promise?"

She tried to speak, but no words fell from her white lips; it seemed to
her that she would never speak again; that the power of speech had
suddenly left her.

"My poor old life is not worth such a sacrifice, Bernardine!" he cried
out, sharply; "and you shall not make it. I will put a drop of something
I know of in a cup of coffee, and then it will be all over with me. He
can not pursue me through the dark gates of death."

"No, no," said the girl, great, heavy tears--a blessed relief--falling
from her eyes like rain. "Your life is more precious to me than all the
world beside. I would take your place on the gallows and die for you,
father. Oh, believe me!--believe me!"

"And you feel in your heart the truth of what I say--that I am innocent,
Bernardine?" he cried. "Say you believe me."

"I would stake my life on your innocence, father," she replied, through
her tears. "I believe in you as I do in Heaven. You shall not die! I
will save you, father. I--I--will--marry Jasper Wilde, if that will save
you!"

She spoke the words clearly, bravely. Her father did not realize that
they nearly cost her her life--that they dug a grave long and deep, in
which her hopes and rosy day-dreams were to be buried.

"You have saved me, Bernardine!" he cried, joyously. "Oh, how you must
love me--poor, old, and helpless as I am!"

She answered him with kisses and tears; she could not trust herself to
speak.

She rose abruptly from her knees, and quitted the room with unsteady
steps.

"Thank Heaven it is over!" muttered David Moore, with a sigh.
"Bernardine has consented, and I am saved!"

The day that followed was surely the darkest sweet Bernardine Moore had
ever known. But it came to an end at last, and with the evening came Jay
Gardiner.

He knew as soon as he greeted Bernardine and her father that something
out of the usual order had transpired, the old basket-maker greet