No wonder Doctor Covert"s words almost took her breath away.
"Are you quite sure?" she responded, after a moment"s pause. "Surely, as you remarked, then there must be _some_ mistake."
"I am positive Doctor Gardiner knows but this one Bernardine. In fact, I heard him say that he never remembered hearing that beautiful name until he heard it for the first time in the humble home of the old basket-maker. And he went on to tell me how lovely the girl was, despite her surroundings."
The veiled lady arose hastily, her hands clinched.
"I thank you for your information," she said, huskily, as she moved rapidly toward the door.
"She is going without my even knowing who she is," thought Doctor Covert, and he sprung from his chair, saying, eagerly:
"I beg a thousand pardons if the remark I am about to make seems presumptuous; but believe that it comes from a heart not prompted by idle curiosity--far, far from that."
"What is it that you wish to know?" asked Sally, curtly.
"Who you are," he replied, with blunt eagerness. "I may as well tell you the truth. I am deeply interested in you, even though you are a stranger, and the bare possibility that we may never meet again fills me with the keenest sorrow I have ever experienced."
Sally Pendleton was equal to the occasion.
"I must throw him off the track at once by giving him a false name and address," she thought.
She hesitated only a moment.
"My name is Rose Thorne," she replied, uttering the falsehood without the slightest quiver in her voice. "I attend a private school for young ladies in Gramercy Park. We are soon to have a public reception, to which we are ent.i.tled to invite our friends, and I should be pleased to send you a card if you think you would care to attend."
"I should be delighted," declared Doctor Covert, eagerly. "If you honor me with an invitation, I shall be sure to be present. I would not miss seeing you again."
Was it only his fancy, or did he hear a smothered laugh from beneath the thick dark veil which hid the girl"s face from his view?
The next moment Sally was gone, and the young doctor gazed after her, as he did on the former occasion with a sigh, and already began looking forward to the time when he should see her again. Meanwhile, Sally lost no time in finding the street and house indicated.
A look of intense amazement overspread her face as she stood in front of the tall, forbidding tenement and looked up at the narrow, grimy windows. It seemed almost incredible that handsome, fastidious Jay Gardiner would even come to such a place, let alone fall in love with an inmate of it.
"The girl must be a coa.r.s.e, ill-bred working-girl," she told herself, "no matter how pretty her face may be."
A number of fleshy, ill-clad women, holding still more poorly clad, fretful children, sat on the door-step, hung out of the open windows and over the bal.u.s.ters, gossiping and slandering their neighbors quite as energetically as the petted wives of the Four Hundred on the fashionable avenues do.
Sally took all this in with a disgusted glance; but lifting her dainty, lace-trimmed linen skirts, she advanced boldly.
"I am in search of a basket-maker who lives somewhere in this vicinity,"
said Sally. "Could you tell me if he lives here?"
"He lives right here," spoke up one of the women. "David Moore is out, so is the elderly woman who is staying with him; but Miss Bernardine is in, I am certain, working busily over her baskets. If you want to see about baskets, she"s the one to go to--top floor, right."
Sally made her way up the narrow, dingy stairs until she reached the top floor. The door to the right stood open, and as Sally advanced she saw a young girl turn quickly from a long pine table covered with branches of willow, and look quickly up.
Sally Pendleton stood still, fairly rooted to the spot with astonishment not unmingled with rage, for the girl upon whom she gazed was the most gloriously beautiful creature she had ever beheld. She did not wonder now that Jay Gardiner had given his heart to her.
In that one moment a wave of such furious hate possessed the soul of Sally Pendleton that it was with the greatest difficulty she could restrain herself from springing upon the unconscious young girl and wrecking forever the fatal beauty which had captivated the heart of the man who was her lover and was so soon to wed.
Sally had thrown back her veil, and was gazing at her rival with her angry soul in her eyes.
Seeing the handsomely dressed young lady, Bernardine came quickly forward with the sweet smile and graceful step habitual to her.
"You wish to see some one--my father, perhaps?" murmured Bernardine, gently.
"_You_ are the person I wish to see," returned Sally, harshly--"you, and no one else."
Bernardine looked at her wonderingly. The cold, hard voice struck her ear unpleasantly, and the strange look in the stranger"s hard, steel-blue eyes made her feel strangely uncomfortable.
Was it a premonition of coming evil?
CHAPTER XXV.
She was not to remain long in suspense.
"In the first place," began Sally, slowly, "I wish to know what your relations are, Bernardine Moore, with Doctor Jay Gardiner. I must and will know the truth."
She saw that the question struck the girl as lightning strikes a fair white rose and withers and blights it with its awful fiery breath.
Bernardine was fairly stricken dumb. She opened her lips to speak, but no sound issued from them. She could not have uttered one syllable if her life had depended on it.
"Let me tell you how the case stands. I will utter the shameful truth for you if you dare not admit it. He is _your lover_ in secret, though he would deny you in public!"
Hapless Bernardine had borne all she could; and without a word, a cry, or even a moan she threw up her little hands, and fell in a lifeless heap at her cruel enemy"s feet.
For a moment Sally Pendleton gazed at her victim, and thoughts worthy of the brain of a fiend incarnate swept through her.
"If she were only dead!" she muttered, excitedly. "Dare I----"
The sentence was never finished. There was a step on the creaking stairs outside, and with a guilty cry of alarm, Miss Pendleton rushed from the room and out into the darkened hall-way.
She brushed past a woman on the narrow stairs, but the darkness was so dense neither recognized the other; and Sally Pendleton had gained the street and turned the nearest corner, ere Miss Rogers--for it was she--reached the top landing.
As she pushed open the door, the first object that met her startled eyes was Bernardine lying like one dead on the floor.
Despite the fact that she was an invalid, Miss Rogers" nerves were exceedingly cool. She did not shriek out, or call excitedly to the other inmates of the house, but went about reviving the girl by wetting her handkerchief with water as cold as it would run from the faucet, and laving her marble-cold face with it, and afterward rubbing her hands briskly.
She was rewarded at length by seeing the great dark eyes slowly open, and the crimson tide of life drift back to the pale, cold cheeks and quivering lips.
A look of wonder filled Bernardine"s eyes as she beheld Miss Rogers bending over her.
"Was it a dream, some awful dream?" she said, excitedly, catching at her friend"s hands and clinging piteously to them.
"What caused your sudden illness, Bernardine?" questioned Miss Rogers, earnestly. "You were apparently well when I left you an hour since."