“Iris, there has been treachery and deceit at work—and through my belief in your guilt I have lost you. Oh, this is killing me!”
He had crushed her passive hands so tightly in his agony and regret that she with difficulty repressed a cry of pain, and then he hurriedly left the room, murmuring as he threw himself back among the car cushions by his sister’s side:
“Oh, if I had only trusted her, but my hand was the first to fling a stone at her memory, my heart the first to fail in its allegiance, and now I am pledged to another, and she——”
He could no longer carry out this bitter train of thought, it almost maddened him to think of Iris as he had left her, remaining on sufferance in the home from which she was an outcast, and where her mother lay dying.
After his departure Iris grew stronger, and, clasping Oscar Hilton’s hand in passionate pleading, begged to be allowed to nurse her mother until the end.
“Oh, sir, please do not refuse me—I will intrude not one hour after—after all is over,” she sobbed, and, broken and weakened by the shock of this sudden calamity, Mr. Hilton reluctantly consented for her to stay, and a few moments later Iris took her position beside her unconscious mother’s bed, prepared to do her duty faithfully to the end, although she knew now that this mother’s hand had doomed her to all the sorrow she had been forced to endure.
Toward noon on the following day Evelyn Hilton recovered consciousness, and, on recognizing her daughter, appeared much pleased, and sank into a heavy slumber, after whispering a few words which were heard by Iris alone.
“I will tell you everything, my daughter, when I wake, and you must try to forgive me.”
But, alas! before she again awakened, the greatest trial of Iris’ life had come to her, and the mother’s eyes were doomed to look no more on her child’s face on this side of the grave.
As early as was at all consistent with the rules of etiquette St. John and Grace called to inquire for the sufferer.