She was not to remain long in suspense.
"In the first place," began Sally, slowly, "I wish to know what your relations are, Bernardine Moore, with Doctor Jay Gardiner. I must and will know the truth."
She saw that the question struck the girl as lightning strikes a fair white rose and withers and blights it with its awful fiery breath.
Bernardine was fairly stricken dumb. She opened her lips to speak, but no sound issued from them. She could not have uttered one syllable if her life had depended on it.
"Let me tell you how the case stands. I will utter the shameful truth for you if you dare not admit it. He is your lover in secret, though he would deny you in public!"
Hapless Bernardine had borne all she could; and without a word, a cry, or even a moan she threw up her little hands, and fell in a lifeless heap at her cruel enemy's feet.
For a moment Sally Pendleton gazed at her victim, and thoughts worthy of the brain of a fiend incarnate swept through her.
"If she were only dead!" she muttered, excitedly. "Dare I——"
The sentence was never finished. There was a step on the creaking stairs outside, and with a guilty cry of alarm, Miss Pendleton rushed from the room and out into the darkened hall-way.
She brushed past a woman on the narrow stairs, but the darkness was so dense neither recognized the other; and Sally Pendleton had gained the street and turned the nearest corner, ere Miss Rogers—for it was she—reached the top landing.