She did not answer, but stood before him with her beautiful head drooped on her breast. 

"You do not love him, Bernardine!" cried Jay Gardiner, bitterly. "Tell me--answer me this--why are you to marry him?" 

Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. 

"If I should sue to you upon my bended knees to be mine, Bernardine, would you not turn from him for me?" 

He knew by the piteous sob that welled from the very depths of her heart how deeply this question must have struck her. 

"Bernardine," he cried, hoarsely, "if ever I read love in a girl's heart when her eyes have met mine, I have read it in yours! You love me, Bernardine. You can not, you dare not deny it. I repeat, if I were to sue you on my bended knees, could you, would you refuse to be my wife?" 

"I--must--marry--Jasper Wilde," she whispered, wretchedly. 

Without another word, stung by pride and pain, Jay Gardiner turned from the girl he had learned to love so madly, and hurried down the dark, winding stairs, and out into the street. 

For one moment poor Bernardine gazed at the open door-way through which his retreating form had passed; then she flung herself down on her knees, and wept as women weep but once in a life-time. 

Wounded love, outraged pride, the sense of keen and bitter humiliation, and yet of dread necessity, was strong upon her. And there was no help for her, no comfort in those tears. 

"Was ever a girl so wronged?" she moaned. 

She wept until there seemed to be no tears left in those dark, mournful eyes. As she lay there, like a pale, broken lily, with her head and heart aching, she wondered, in her gentle way, why this sorrow should have fallen upon her. 

While she lay there, weeping her very heart out, Jay Gardiner was walking down the street, his brain in a whirl, his emotions wrenching his very soul. 

Miss Pendleton had written him that she would expect him to call that evening. He had been about to write her that it would be an impossibility; but now he changed his mind. Going there would be of some benefit to him, after all, for it would bring him surcease of sorrow for one brief hour, forgetfulness of Bernardine during that time.It touched him a little to see how delightedly the 

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