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!