She did not hold out her hand, but she looked into the startled young face with a kindly smile and a nod. Whatever her thoughts were in regard to her mother's companion, they were not expressed in her face.
A score of times during the half hour that followed, Bernardine tried to find courage to tell Mrs. Gardiner that she must go away; that she could not live under that roof and meet the man she loved, and who was to bring home a bride.
But each time the words died away on her lips. Then suddenly, she could not tell how or when the feeling entered her heart, the longing came to her to look upon the face of the young girl who had gained the love she would have given her very life—ay, her hope of heaven—to have retained.
CHAPTER XLV.
To sit quietly by and hear mother and daughter discuss the man she loved, was as hard for Bernardine to endure as the pangs of death.
"He is sure to be a worshipful husband," said Miss Margaret. "I always said love would be a grand passion with Jay. He will love once, and that will be forever, and to his wife he will be always true."
Poor, hapless Bernardine could have cried aloud as she listened. What would that proud lady-mother and that haughty sister say if they but knew how he had tricked her into a sham marriage, and abandoned her then and there? Oh, would they feel pity for her, or contempt?
The servants, in livery, had taken their posts; everything was in readiness now to welcome the five hundred guests that were to arrive in advance of the bridal pair.
In her boudoir, the grand old lady-mother, resplendent in ivory-satin, rare old point lace and diamonds, was viewing herself critically in the long pier-glass that reached from ceiling to floor. Her daughter Margaret stood near her, arrayed in satin and tulle, with pearls white as moonbeams lying on her breast, clasping her white throat and arms, and twined among the meshes of her dark hair.
The contrast made poor Bernardine look strangely out of place in her plain gray cashmere dress, with its somber dark ribbons.