The housekeeper had said she would find the room that had been prepared for her at the extreme end of the same corridor, and in groping her way to it in the dim, rose-colored light which pervaded the outer hall, she unconsciously turned in the wrong direction, and went to the right instead of the left.
The door stood ajar, and thinking the housekeeper had left it in this way for her, Bernardine pushed it open.
To her great astonishment, she found herself in a beautifully furnished sleeping apartment, upholstered in white and gold of the costliest description, and flooded by a radiance of brilliant light from a grand chandelier overhead.
But it was not the magnificent hangings, or the long mirrors, in their heavy gilt frames, that caught and held the girl's startled gaze.
It was a full-length portrait hanging over the marble mantle, and it startled her so that she uttered a low cry, and clasped her little hands together as children do when uttering a prayer.
Her reverie lasted only for a moment. Then she drifted back to the present. She was in this strange house as a companion, and the first thing she came across was the portrait, as natural as life itself, of—Jay Gardiner!
A mad desire came over her to kneel before the picture and—die!
CHAPTER XLIV.
Bernardine did not have much time to study the portrait, for all of a sudden she heard footsteps in the corridor without, and in another moment Mrs. King, the housekeeper, had crossed the threshold, and approached her excitedly.
"I feared you would be apt to make this mistake," she said, breathlessly. "Your room is in the opposite direction, Miss Moore."