"You do not love him, Bernardine!" cried Jay Gardiner, bitterly. "Tell me—answer me this—why are you to marry him?"
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them.
"If I should sue to you upon my bended knees to be mine, Bernardine, would you not turn from him for me?"
He knew by the piteous sob that welled from the very depths of her heart how deeply this question must have struck her.
"Bernardine," he cried, hoarsely, "if ever I read love in a girl's heart when her eyes have met mine, I have read it in yours! You love me, Bernardine. You can not, you dare not deny it. I repeat, if I were to sue you on my bended knees, could you, would you refuse to be my wife?"
"I—must—marry—Jasper Wilde," she whispered, wretchedly.
Without another word, stung by pride and pain, Jay Gardiner turned from the girl he had learned to love so madly, and hurried down the dark, winding stairs, and out into the street.
For one moment poor Bernardine gazed at the open door-way through which his retreating form had passed; then she flung herself down on her knees, and wept as women weep but once in a life-time.
Wounded love, outraged pride, the sense of keen and bitter humiliation, and yet of dread necessity, was strong upon her. And there was no help for her, no comfort in those tears.
"Was ever a girl so wronged?" she moaned.