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. HE WISHED HE COULD TELL SOMEONE HIS UNFORTUNATE LOVE STORY. 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 goodbye 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 the dark days ahead of him. It read as follows:

"MY DEAR DOCTOR GARDINER--You will probably be surprised to learn that by the time this reaches you I shall be far away from New York, on a little secret mission which has been a pet notion of mine ever since I began to recover from my last illness. Do not be much surprised at any very eccentric scheme you may hear of me undertaking. "Yours hastily and faithfully, "MISS ROGERS."

The terse letter was characteristic of the writer. Doctor Gardiner replaced it in its envelope, put it away in his 

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