Several of the friends whom Iris Hilton had visited in the days of her
prosperity resided on Lexington Avenue, and she knew that the number
mentioned in the dispatch was in the neighborhood of Twenty-third
Street, so that she had not more than a dozen blocks to walk from Madam
Ward’s establishment to her destination.
At last the goal was reached, and she stood still for one moment before
she could ascend the high stone stoop, pressing her hands to her heart,
and praying for strength to go through the ordeal before her.
“He must not see me looking so ill--as I feel I am looking now. Oh, my
darling! My brave, strong, noble love, what can have stricken you down
so soon?” she murmured; and summoning all her strength to overcome the
faintness that was creeping slowly upon her, she ascended the steps and
rang a soft peal at the doorbell.
A stolid-looking colored man opened the door at her summons, and the
girl tried to read in his face some knowledge of the true state of
affairs in his master’s household, but she might as well have sought to
penetrate the countenance of a statue.
“I wish to see him--Mr. St. John--they--they telegraphed for me,” she
said, with a quick, panting breath, and at her words the ebony statue
smiled and opened the door wider, that she might enter.
“Oh, yes, missy, I have had my orders to admit you,” he said, and
something in his careless, and even jovial manner gave Iris a hope that
things were not so bad with Chester St. John as she had feared.
“Will you take me to him now--at once,” she cried. “Oh, please make no
delay--I am very calm, I shall say or do nothing to excite him.”
“All right, missy, just you follow me,” replied the negro; and, still
smiling blandly, he led the way to a room in the second story.
On the threshold of this room the girl paused, her heart beating
tumultuously, and her fair, young face growing white as the dead.
“Oh, God, grant that he may recognize me, and that I may teach him to
know that I was never false to him,” she prayed, and then, forcing
back the sobs that were rising in her throat, she followed the servant
into the room, stepping softly in her fear of disturbing the invalid,
but recoiling with a little cry of repugnance and dismay as her eyes
fell upon the face of the man who had come forward to meet her--the
handsome, saturnine face of Charles Broughton.
As yet she had not conceived any idea of treachery, and after this
first involuntary shrinking from the man whom, for some reason, she
disliked and feared--she would not allow herself to think of anything
but Chester St. John.
“Where is he?” she whispered, with a wild glance around the room; and
at her words Broughton broke into a low, mocking laugh.
“My dear, you must grant me your pardon for luring you here by
stratagem. Your lover is--for aught I know to the contrary--as well
as you or I at this moment; but I knew of no other way of gaining
an interview with you, and so took the liberty of using his name to
accomplish my purpose--don’t look so horrified--I mean no harm to
you--sit down, and Sam shall bring you some wine.”
There was no need for him to tell her to be seated.
She had fallen into the chair nearest her, trembling in every limb, and
for the moment utterly incapable of speech or motion.
* * * * *
On the day subsequent to that on which Iris had left the home of Oscar
Hilton, Isabel, the beloved daughter of the latter, was taken suddenly
and dangerously ill, and the fond father was almost beside himself with
fear for his darling’s safety.
But for this greater and all-absorbing sorrow he would have caused an
immediate search to be made for Iris, as it had been no part of his
policy to drive the girl from his roof.
Mrs. Hilton, as has been mentioned, was a confirmed invalid, and Iris
had been her constant attendant.
She fretted and lamented her daughter’s absence now to such an extent
that Mr. Hilton could not bear to enter her presence.
Evelyn Hilton had been a woman of rare and unusual beauty, and of the
poor remains of this loveliness she was even now foolishly proud.
She was a vain, selfish woman, inordinately fond of dress and luxurious
living, and with little affection to bestow on any object but self.
She had never seemed to bear the real mother love for her only child,
being unable to understand the noble nature of Iris, a nature high
above her own as the stars above the earth.
It gave her no pain now to think of her child’s probable fate, but she
lamented in bitter terms the girl’s heartlessness in leaving her to the
care of hirelings.
“Why did you say anything to drive her away, Oscar? You know how sadly
I shall miss her. I shall never be able to sleep without her voice to
read to me, and no one can soothe me as Iris could, when I suffer with
that dreadful pain in my head. You must find her and bring her back
to me. I cannot get along without Iris; indeed, I cannot, Oscar,” the
invalid had cried to her husband; and he had promised to find the girl
if possible, and would certainly have made an attempt to do so had it
not been for the fact of Isabel’s alarming seizure.
This put all thoughts of Iris from his mind, and during the three days
that followed the house was in a state of confusion impossible to
describe.
It appeared that every doctor of note in the city was called in to
prescribe for Isabel, and it soon became known throughout the circle
to which proud, dark-eyed Isabel had been wont to mingle that Oscar
Hilton’s daughter’s life was despaired of.
On the fourth day of Isabel’s illness Chester St. John, who had left
the city on the day when Iris rejected his love, returned to his home,
and, chancing to hear of the illness of Hilton’s daughter through the
conversation of two gentlemen in his clubroom, at once concluded that
the sufferer was the girl whom he had loved--nay, whom he still loved
as he could never love another, although her own words had condemned
her as a heartless coquette, and he had parted from her with bitter
words of reproach and recrimination.
“Iris dying! Oh, it cannot be! My bright, beautiful love,” he groaned,
and the impulse to go to her home and beg them to let him look upon her
face once more was too strong to be resisted.
He remembered now, when he had believed that Heaven was taking her from
him--remembered with an anguish keen as death--the last look he had
seen in the deep blue eyes of Iris--the look of passionate love and
bitter pain that had followed him, even while her cruel lips sent him
from her.
“There was some mistake--oh, my love! My precious little Iris, if I
could see you now you would make it plain to me,” he thought, and
walked directly from the club to Oscar Hilton’s, his heart turning sick
within him as he approached the house, and a terrible fear came to him
that he might see long streamers of crape and white ribbon streaming
from the bell handle.
“I think the sight would have killed me,” he murmured, as he stood on
the threshold awaiting admittance a few minutes later.
On this day Isabel had been pronounced “out of danger,” and Oscar
Hilton consented to leave her bedside long enough to see Mr. St. John.
The desire to win this rich man for his daughter’s husband instantly
revived in the father’s heart at sight of Chester’s card, and he left
the presence of the girl who had been so near to the portals of death
with no prayer of thanksgiving in his heart to the God who had spared
her to him, but with wild schemes running through his brain for her
worldly advancement. He knew that when she gained her strength again
she would stop at nothing to bring this proud, handsome Chester St.
John to her feet, and he himself had a plan by which he hoped to aid
her in the accomplishment of this purpose.
On entering the little reception room into which a servant had shown
St. John, Mr. Hilton was startled by the almost ghastly pallor of the
young man’s face. He was not long in making the discovery that it was
fears for the life of Iris, and no anxiety for Isabel, that had wrought
this change in the strong, proud man before him, and a fierce and
unreasoning hatred sprang to life in his heart for the hapless child
whose sweet, young face had had power to awaken such a wondrous depth
of love in this man’s soul, a love that his own queenly Isabel had
failed as yet to inspire.
The plans which had been hitherto vague and shadowy took sudden form
and shape in his scheming brain, and when Chester St. John left the
house, nearly an hour later, Oscar Hilton watched his retreating form
with a look almost amounting to triumph.
“I have shaken his faith in her, even as she herself could not shake
it, although she assured him she had no love for him, and led him to
think her a coquette. He will not seek her now, although he does not as
yet believe--as I hinted to him--that she has left my roof for the arms
of some unworthy lover. He shall believe it, though--if Evelyn has not
forgotten her cunning in imitating her daughter’s pretty penmanship.”