CHAPTER L.
SUNDERED HEARTS.
On the afternoon of the day following Chester St. John’s visit to Mr. Hilton, the former was seated alone in the library of his father’s mansion on Fifth Avenue, pondering sadly over the change that seemed to have come over all his life since the hour when the hope he had cherished of winning Iris for his wife had been shattered by her own cruel rejection of him.
He felt assured that there was some mystery connected with Iris’ flight from the home of the man he still believed to be her father, but that this mystery was connected with any unworthy love never for one moment occurred to the loyal heart of Chester St. John, Oscar Hilton’s hints to that effect notwithstanding.
While he was thinking thus, a servant brought him a card bearing the name of Oscar Hilton, and informed him that that gentleman was waiting to see him downstairs.
“Thank Heaven, he brings me some news of Iris!” was Chester’s first thought. But his first glimpse into Hilton’s face showed him that whatever the tidings the latter brought there was in them no cause for rejoicing.
Mr. Hilton was very pale, and his face wore an expression of deep sorrow.
“I am in great trouble,” he said, in answer to Chester’s anxious inquiry, and stood for a moment with his hands clasped on the low, marble mantel, and his face hidden in them.
St. John was terribly alarmed, but could not give voice to his fears, and Hilton himself was obliged to resume the conversation.
“I came to you, St. John, because I know you loved my unfortunate child, and——”
“My God, what is it? What has happened? Do not keep me in suspense; tell me the worst,” cried the young man hoarsely.
And with his hatred for unhappy Iris growing stronger than ever with every fresh evidence of this man’s love for her, Hilton exclaimed:
“The worst is only this—that Iris is unworthy your love or mine. Chester St. John, I will tell you a secret you should never have known but for that girl’s ingratitude to me. Iris is no child of mine; her mother was, when I first met her, the divorced wife of a man who was serving out a term of imprisonment for forgery.
“You can understand my infatuation, St. John, when I tell you that the mother at that time was far more beautiful than the daughter is to-day. Iris was then a child of two years, and I promised to rear her as my own, and have faithfully kept my vow, as you may have seen, making no difference between her and my own child, Isabel. When I listened to your confession of love for her, you may have seen that I was agitated, but even then I would have allowed you to take the girl to your heart without revealing a word of the truth to you, in my affection for her, had it not been for her conduct since that time. But what is the matter with you? Why do you look at me so strangely?”
“I think I understand now the reason she rejected me. You were not so kind to her as you tried to be to me. You told her this story of her unhappy parentage, and the poor child was too proud to come to me with this stain upon her name, my poor, little love!”
The tone of exquisite tenderness in which these last words were spoken enraged Hilton almost beyond power of control, and he could not quite conceal his exultation as he handed Chester a dainty, pink-tinted envelope, with his own name written in a feminine hand on its face.
He recognized the penmanship instantly as that of Iris, who had once copied a song for him, and whose notes to his sister Grace he had read on several occasions.
“Read the letter; you have a right to be made acquainted with its contents,” said Mr. Hilton; and thus urged, St. John took the letter, upon which Iris’ blue eyes had never fallen, and read words that separated him from her so effectually that unless the truth of this missive should be discovered, she would be to him henceforth as the greatest stranger—a woman whom he could no longer respect.
He handed the letter back to Oscar Hilton in silence, but his face was as white as it would ever be in its coffin, and his hand trembled so that the letter fluttered from his hold to the floor.
“I thank you for having awakened me from my dream,” he said hoarsely; and a few minutes later Mr. Hilton took his departure, exulting in the thought that if Chester St. John and Iris Tresilian met face to face on the morrow, the former would pass the girl as if she were a stranger; and it now only remained for Isabel to win the heart which no longer belonged to another.