eat companions, father and I. He
regales me by the hour with wonderful stories of things he used to see
when he was a steamboat captain. But he met with an accident one time,
and then he had to turn to basket-making."

As he conversed with the young girl, Jay Gardiner was indeed surprised
to see what a fund of knowledge that youthful mind contained. She was
the first young girl whom he had met who could sit down and talk
sensibly to a man. Her ideas were so sweet, so natural, that it charmed
him in spite of himself. She was like a heroine out of a
story-book--just such a one, he thought, as Martha Washington must have
been in her girlhood days. His admiration and respect for her grew with
each moment.

CHAPTER X.

WHAT IS LIFE WITHOUT LOVE?

Every evening, on some pretext or other, Jay Gardiner managed to pay
David Moore, the basket-maker, a visit, and the cynical old man began to
look forward to these visits.

He never dreamed that his daughter was the magnet which drew the young
man to his poor home. They were evenings that Jay Gardiner never forgot.

Bernardine was slightly confused at first by his presence; then she
began to view the matter in another light--that the young doctor had
taken quite an interest in her father. He had certainly cured him of a
terrible habit, and she was only too pleased that her father should have
visits from so pleasant a man.

She always had some work in her slender white hands when the doctor
called. Sometimes, glancing up unexpectedly, she would find the doctor's
keen blue eyes regarding her intently, and she would bend lower over her
sewing. Jay Gardiner, however, saw the flush that rose to her cheek and
brow.

As he sat in that little tenement sitting-room--he who had been
flattered and courted by the most beautiful heiresses--he experienced a
feeling of rest come over him.

He would rather pass one hour in that plain, unpretentious sitting-room
than visit the grandest Fifth Avenue mansion.

And thus a fortnight passed. At the end of that time, Jay Gardiner stood
face to face with the knowledge of his own secret--that he had at last
met in Bernardine Moore the idol of his life. He stood face to face with
this one fact--that wealth, grandeur, anything that earth could give
him, was of little value unless he had the love of sweet Bernardine.

It came upon him suddenly that the sweet witchery, the glamor falling
over him was--love.

He realized that he lived onl