CHAPTER XIV.
"HAVE I BROKEN YOUR HEART, MY DARLING?"
Bernardine Moore slowly untwined her white arms from about her father's neck, and turned her white, anguished face toward him, and the awful despair that lay in the dark eyes that met his was more piteous than any words could have been.
"Have I broken your heart, Bernardine?" he cried out. "Oh, my child, my beautiful Bernardine, have I ruined your life by that fatal promise?"
She tried to speak, but no words fell from her white lips; it seemed to her that she would never speak again; that the power of speech had suddenly left her.
"My poor old life is not worth such a sacrifice, Bernardine!" he cried out, sharply; "and you shall not make it. I will put a drop of something I know of in a cup of coffee, and then it will be all over with me. He can not pursue me through the dark gates of death."
"No, no," said the girl, great, heavy tears—a blessed relief—falling from her eyes like rain. "Your life is more precious to me than all the world beside. I would take your place on the gallows and die for you, father. Oh, believe me!—believe me!"
"And you feel in your heart the truth of what I say—that I am innocent, Bernardine?" he cried. "Say you believe me."
"I would stake my life on your innocence, father," she replied, through her tears. "I believe in you as I do in Heaven. You shall not die! I will save you, father. I—I—will—marry Jasper Wilde, if that will save you!"
She spoke the words clearly, bravely. Her father did not realize that they nearly cost her her life—that they dug a grave long and deep, in which her hopes and rosy day-dreams were to be buried.