It was plain to even her experienced eye—and she had never yet looked upon a person in the death struggle—that Mrs. Mason would never see another sunrise.
“Oh, Jenny, you must bring a doctor at once!” cried Iris, but at the sound of these words the invalid’s fingers closed tighter around the hand of her child.
“Do not leave me—no doctor can—give me one moment of life. I want you with me—till the end comes!” she whispered, and Iris had not the heart to oppose the dying woman’s wishes.
“Tell me where the doctor lives!” Iris whispered.
Jenny offered a feeble remonstrance, but Iris would not listen, and, a moment later, the latter was hurrying through the city streets.
The doctor of whom she was in search resided about a dozen blocks from the residence of Mrs. Mason, and Iris had gone about half that distance when two gentlemen met her face to face.
She was not veiled, and the moonlight fell upon her beautiful, pale face.
At sight of her both of the gentlemen started, and Iris in her turn—having recognized in one of these men the gentleman whose face had so strangely started her on the previous evening—uttered an exclamation of dismay at first, but quickly recovering herself, bent her head in acknowledgment of her recognition of him, and hurried on without a glance into the face of his companion, with whom she had often danced and chatted in the days when she believed herself the young daughter and joint heiress of Oscar Hilton.
Iris had not gone two dozen paces away from them when the companion of Charles Broughton clasped the latter’s arm excitedly.
“What can be the matter, Charley? Do you know anything about it? Iris Hilton is not the girl whom I would expect to find walking the streets at night alone, and at this hour, too. Why, Broughton, it is nearly half past eleven. I shall follow her—there must be something wrong.”