“Bah! how hard it is for me to humor her jealous whims, and to keep up a pretense of fondness for her. If I had allowed her to continue in her belief that I admired this Maggie Gordon, she would have succeeded in getting the girl out of the way.”
Charles Broughton had reached his hotel by this time, and encountered a friend who had been awaiting his arrival in the reading room, and who greeted him with an exclamation of astonishment.
“Heavens, Charley, how ill you look!”
“Never mind my looks, my friend; I am a little under the weather, but I don’t care to be reminded of it continually. Come up to my den, and let me see if a chat with you and a glass of wine will not restore me,” said Broughton carelessly; and a few moments later found the friends chatting and laughing over their wine and cigars.
But always between Charles Broughton and the ruby liquid he raised so often to his lips came the beautiful face and violet eyes of the girl who had declared herself to be Maggie Gordon.
CHAPTER XLVII.
TREACHERY.
“Miss Iris! Oh, please excuse me, I promised to call you always Maggie, but I am so frightened—I don’t know what I say. Maggie, are you awake? My mother is very ill, I fear; I do not know what to do for her. Won’t you please get up and look at her?”
It was the night following that on which Iris had first entered the humble home of Jenny Mason, and a comfortable couch had been provided for her—at her own expense—in the little bedroom opening off the apartment which served as sitting room, dining room, and kitchen in one.
It was after eleven o’clock that night when Jenny aroused Iris from a deep sleep.
She arose from her bed with a sickening sense of dizziness and an oppressing weight on her heart, but one glance into the white, pained face of Jenny’s suffering mother gave her a false power of endurance.