St. John was about to ask Iris a question which would have betrayed him.
He was about to ask her where was the man whose fortune she had left her home to follow, that he might have constituted himself her champion and avenger, had he discovered that this lover had basely deserted or deceived her.
At this moment light footsteps were heard approaching the door, and a sweet, girlish voice calling gayly:
“Chester! Isabel! Where are you, truants?” as the door was thrown open unceremoniously to admit a fairylike vision in the person of pretty, golden-haired Grace St. John, who had been Iris Tresilian’s most intimate and best-loved friend.
“Ah, brother Chester, how wicked of you to keep Belle all this time from her friends; we shall be obliged——”
Grace’s merry voice ceased all of a sudden, for her eyes had fallen on the pale, drooped face of Iris, and although Chester made an involuntary movement as if to step between them—a movement Iris understood but too well, the impulsive Grace sprang quickly to the side of the outcast, and clasped her white arms around the latter’s neck, crying joyously:
“Oh, Iris, darling, I am so glad to see you; I have missed you so—I shall be so happy now that you have come home, but, Iris, dear, why do you sob so bitterly?”
At the first word of kindness, and the first touch of Grace’s caressing hands, Iris had broken down utterly, and her slender frame was racked with hoarse, convulsive sobs that were pitiful to hear.
Mr. Hilton addressed St. John in a harsh, imperative tone:
“Take your sister and Isabel back to the parlors while I attend to Iris. This is no scene for either of them.”