CHAPTER XLIV.
A CRUEL ORDEAL.
Chester St. John, waiting rather impatiently for the appearance of Iris in the parlor, came forward with warm words of greeting to meet the little white-robed figure, when the girl at last made her appearance, failing, in the semidarkness of the room, to notice the unusual pallor of her face, or the strange constraint of her manner.
“Iris!”
He could only speak the two soft, sweet syllables of her name, thinking how well it suited her—Iris—like a rainbow, always bright.
He tried to take her hands in his own, for—although he had as yet made no actual declaration of his love, he knew he had shown her in many ways how dear she was to him, and if he was not mistaken in the language of her sweet, beautiful eyes, he felt equally confident that his love was returned.
It was not until her hand lay in his own, and he felt it cold as ice in his clasp, that he took the alarm.
“Iris, my beloved! You know why I have come to you this morning; your father has told you——” he began, and then—drawing her closely in his arms he looked intently in her face, uttering a low cry of alarm at sight of the white, changed countenance. “Iris! Oh, my love, what is it? What pain or sorrow has come to you?” he exclaimed, bending his lips to hers, while for one moment she lay white and passive in his embrace. “Speak to me, my little one! My wife!” he ejaculated. But at the sound of those words, “My wife!” Iris drew herself out of his embrace, shivering from head to foot, and covering her ears to shut out the sound of the voice whose every accent was sweeter than any earthly music to her.
“You must not talk to me so. You have no right to address me in such terms,” she said in a voice that sounded cold and feelingless from the very effort she was making to control her emotion. “I cannot be your wife, Mr. St. John. I—I do not love you. You have been mistaken; please do not distress me by repeating your offer.”
It was such a cold and careless rejection that Chester St. John could not at first believe the evidence of his own ears.
What transpired during the next few minutes Iris could never clearly recall. She had a vague memory of hearing a voice that bore no resemblance to the clear tones of Chester St. John, upbraiding her in bitter, heartbreaking terms for making his life desolate, and destroying his faith in his mother’s sex.
She seemed to feel for days and weeks afterward the close, almost cruel, pressure of his hand as he held her fingers for one moment in parting; after which it had seemed to her that the earth grew suddenly dark and cold as the grave, and for the second time, since listening to Oscar Hilton’s story in the library, she had fallen like one dead.