“Iris, my beloved! You know why I have come to you this morning; your father has told you——” he began, and then—drawing her closely in his arms he looked intently in her face, uttering a low cry of alarm at sight of the white, changed countenance. “Iris! Oh, my love, what is it? What pain or sorrow has come to you?” he exclaimed, bending his lips to hers, while for one moment she lay white and passive in his embrace. “Speak to me, my little one! My wife!” he ejaculated. But at the sound of those words, “My wife!” Iris drew herself out of his embrace, shivering from head to foot, and covering her ears to shut out the sound of the voice whose every accent was sweeter than any earthly music to her.
“You must not talk to me so. You have no right to address me in such terms,” she said in a voice that sounded cold and feelingless from the very effort she was making to control her emotion. “I cannot be your wife, Mr. St. John. I—I do not love you. You have been mistaken; please do not distress me by repeating your offer.”
It was such a cold and careless rejection that Chester St. John could not at first believe the evidence of his own ears.
What transpired during the next few minutes Iris could never clearly recall. She had a vague memory of hearing a voice that bore no resemblance to the clear tones of Chester St. John, upbraiding her in bitter, heartbreaking terms for making his life desolate, and destroying his faith in his mother’s sex.
She seemed to feel for days and weeks afterward the close, almost cruel, pressure of his hand as he held her fingers for one moment in parting; after which it had seemed to her that the earth grew suddenly dark and cold as the grave, and for the second time, since listening to Oscar Hilton’s story in the library, she had fallen like one dead.
CHAPTER XLV.
ENTERING ON THE NEW LIFE.
“Jenny, how much longer must you work to-night? It is so tiresome, lying here alone, with no one to speak to me; won’t you put aside your sewing, dear, and read for me?”
It was a woman’s voice, weak and fretful, that uttered these words, and the person to whom they were addressed, a pale, weary-looking girl of twenty years, put aside the handsome silk robe upon which she had been sewing, and came to the bedside of the invalid.
“I must work a little longer, mother, dear,” she said softly. “Miss Hilton will be so angry about her dress; you know I promised it for last night, and failed to have it done, because of that unfortunate headache; but what is the matter, mother—are you feeling worse? Oh, my mother! I seem to see you failing, hour by hour.”
Jenny had broken into a passionate fit of weeping, kneeling by the low cot bed with her face on her mother’s breast.