With these words Kendal quitted the room, and left Dorothy standing there with the tears falling like rain down her cheeks—surely the most piteous object in the whole wide world.
When Kendal found himself alone his intense anger against Dorothy began to cool a little.
"It is true she attempted to do a horrible deed," he muttered; "but I must not forget that love for me prompted her to it, and show her some mercy."
After all the guests had taken their departure, and the house had settled down into the darkness and quiet of the waning night, Kendal paced his room in a greatly perturbed state of mind, thinking the matter over.
He was terribly in love with Iris, he admitted to himself; but he had done wrong, fearfully wrong, in breaking off his engagement with Dorothy until after the reading of the will. Iris was beautiful, bewitching—his idea of all that a proud, imperious, willful sweetheart should be—but Dorothy would have what was much better than all this, the golden shekels; and then, too, now that the girl was no longer blind, she would have plenty of admirers; and he could have cursed himself for those hasty words, that no longer should she live under the same roof with himself.
It was daylight when he threw himself down on the bed, fairly worn out; and his head no sooner touched the pillow than he fell into a deep sleep, and it was almost noon ere he opened his eyes again, and then it was the slow, measured chime of the clock as it struck the half hour which awakened him.
"Great Heaven! half past eleven!" he ejaculated, springing from the couch. "I shall barely have time to get downstairs to be present at the reading of the will. I must make all haste; but first of all I must find out how Iris is, and if her shoulder pains her much."
He rang the bell hastily, and to the servant who answered the summons he gave his verbal message to Miss Vincent. But in a very short time the man returned, placing a letter in his hand.
Kendal was mystified, for he saw that it was Iris' delicate chirography. He tore open the envelope with the fever of impatience, and as his eye fell upon the delicately written lines his handsome face turned white as marble.
"My dear Harry," it commenced, "you will feel greatly surprised at the contents of this letter. I think it best to break into the subject at once, and to tell you the plain truth of just what has happened.