"On the very day I regained consciousness, I learned about the terrible fire that had wiped out the tenement home which I had known since my earliest childhood, and that my poor, hapless father had perished in the flames.
"I did my best to discover your whereabouts, Miss Rogers, at first fearing you had shared my poor father's fate; but this fear proved to be without foundation, for the neighbors remembered seeing you go out to mail a letter a short time before the fire broke out.
"I felt that some day we should meet again, but I never dreamed that it would be like this."
"Have you told me all, Bernardine?" asked Miss Rogers, slowly. "You are greatly changed, child. When you fled from your home, you were but a school-girl, now you are a woman. What has wrought so great a change in so short a time?"
"I can not tell you that, Miss Rogers," answered Bernardine, falteringly. "That is a secret I must keep carefully locked up in my breast until the day I die!" she said, piteously.
"I am sorry you will not intrust your secret to me," replied Miss Rogers. "You shall never have reason to repent of any faith you place in me."
"There are some things that are better left untold," sobbed Bernardine. "Some wounds where the cruel weapons that made them have not yet been removed. This is one of them."
"Is love, the sweetest boon e'er given to women, and yet the bitterest woe to many, the rock on which you wrecked your life, child? Tell me that much."
"Yes," sobbed Bernardine. "I loved, and was—cruelly—deceived!"
"Oh, do not tell me that!" cried Miss Rogers. "I can not bear it. Oh, Heaven! that you, so sweet, and pure, and innocent, should fall a victim to a man's wiles! Oh, tell me, Bernardine, that I have not heard aright!"