“Iris Hilton!” he exclaimed, involuntarily uttering the name by which he had known her; and then catching the angry, indignant look in Broughton’s eyes, he sought to offer some apology for his rudeness. As for Iris herself, she uttered no word or sound.
“You told me to call at this hour, Broughton,” began Dare in a confused and hesitating manner; to which Broughton replied with a laugh:
“Of course I did, my dear boy, and we’ll settle our little business at once. Come downstairs with me, if you please; Iris will excuse me and remain here until I return to her, will you not, my dear?”
At this pointed question Iris lifted her face quickly with an angry, rebellious flash in her deep blue eyes, but the words she would have spoken died on her lips as she encountered his glance, and she could only bow her head in silence.
Finding herself alone a moment later, she tried to collect her thoughts, and to arrange some plan for her future, but the weight of her mother’s sin was too heavy upon her, and she seemed alike incapable of thought or action.
“My duty is to obey him, and to so repair the wrong my mother has done him as to win him from his scheme of vengeance,” was the noble thought that came to Iris, even in this hour of her bitter humiliation and pain; and when Broughton—as we will still call the man who had declared his real name to be Carleton Tresilian—returned to the room after dismissing his visitor, Iris, white as the dead, but calm and tearless, met him with words that filled his heart with a thousand varying emotions.
“What can I do to repair the cruel wrong you have suffered at my mother’s hands? I am only a girl, weak and painfully ignorant of the world and its ways; but you say you are my father, and I am ready to obey you—what would you have me do?”
She was standing before him now, with her beautiful white face upturned to him, and her hands clasped tightly before her, showing the strong effort she was making to control her agitation.
If Iris had borne less resemblance to the woman who had wronged him, his heart might have softened to the innocent offspring, but now the girl’s beauty only recalled to mind the tortures her mother had forced him to endure, and he laughed mockingly at her efforts to conciliate him.
“My dear, I know you will obey me, simply for the reason that I shall compel you to do so. I do not intend to ask any great sacrifice at your hands; but before I state what I shall require of you, I want you to tell me why you left the home of your mother’s husband so suddenly, and why you fled from the man who was willing to marry you—the wealthy Chester St. John. I have followed up your history pretty closely since I first looked upon your face in the room occupied by the sewing girl, Jenny Mason, but the cause of your leaving Mr. Hilton’s protection I have not as yet been able to discover. Please tell me the truth of the matter at once.”