“No, Chester; you believed that Iris was guilty—you were false to her when she most needed a true friend; but I could never doubt her, and I shall stay beside her now to give help and what comfort I may in the trial I see before her.”
“God bless you for your faith in her, my sweet sister!” answered Chester huskily, as he laid the trembling form of Iris out of his arms, back into the chair from which she had arisen, ere he hurried from the house to bring the doctor to Mrs. Hilton.
While he was absent on this errand, Isabel, who realized, with a sickening sense of desolation and misery, that St. John was lost to her forever, escaped to her own apartments, where she locked herself in, refusing to admit even her maid until the afternoon of the following day.
St. John returned with a doctor in less than fifteen minutes. Mrs. Hilton was still in convulsions, and the physician saw at a glance that her case was hopeless.
He gave his decision promptly and without any unnecessary beating around the bush.
“I will do all that is possible to relieve your wife’s sufferings, Mr. Hilton, but it is beyond the power of mortal skill to save her. She may linger with intervals of consciousness for several days, and she may pass away before daylight; but in any case I have not the faintest hope of her recovery.”
Mr. Hilton groaned aloud at these words, while Iris wept bitterly.
The latter had not entirely lost consciousness, but that sickening feeling of weakness robbed her limbs of their strength, and she could not for her life have arisen from the chair in which Chester had placed her, until nearly an hour had passed, and Chester and Grace were preparing to take their departure.
Mrs. Hilton had been carried upstairs to her own apartments, but Mr. Hilton still lingered, waiting in an agony of impatience for the St. Johns to leave the house.
Iris scarcely heard Grace’s words of farewell, but every tone of Chester’s voice thrilled her heart to its inmost core, as he bent over her chair and clasped both her hands in his own.