e. "Go to your bed, Bernardine, and
sleep. It is a great thing to be able to sleep--and forget."

"Poor papa!" sighed the girl, "how I pity him! Life has been very hard
to him. Why are some men born to be gentlemen, with untold wealth at
their command, while others are born to toil all their weary lives
through for the meager pittance that suffices to keep body and soul
together?"

She went slowly to her little room, but not to sleep. She crossed over
to the window, sat down on a chair beside it, and looked up at the bit
of starry sky that was visible between the tall house-tops and still
taller chimneys, then down at the narrow deserted street so far below,
and gave herself up to meditation.

"No, no; I could never marry Jasper Wilde!" she mused. "The very thought
of it makes me grow faint and sick at heart; his very presence fills me
with an indescribable loathing which I can not shake off. How
differently the presence of Doctor Gardiner affects me! I--I find myself
watching for his coming, and dreading the time when he will cease to
visit papa."

Doctor Gardiner's coming had been to Bernardine as the sun to the
violet. The old life had fallen from her, and she was beginning to live
a new one in his presence.

As she sat by the window, she thought of the look the young doctor had
given her at parting. The remembrance of it quickened the beating of her
heart, and brought the color to her usually pale cheeks.

How different the young doctor was from Jasper Wilde! If the young
doctor had asked her the same question Jasper Wilde had, would her
answer have been the same?

The clock in an adjacent belfry slowly tolled the midnight hour.
Bernardine started.

"How quickly the time has flown since I have been sitting here," she
thought.

She did not know that it had been because her 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 SOME ONE HIS UNFORTUNATE LOVE STORY.

During the weeks Doctor Ga