CHAPTER LIV.
IN THE TOILS.
All day long, while the eyes of her humble friend Jenny and the rest of her shopmates were on her, Iris preserved a calm and almost happy exterior; but when night came, and she lay awake by the sleeping Jenny’s side, then, indeed, the girl’s young heart was like to break, and the God in whom she trusted alone knew what she suffered.
It was a close, sultry day in early springtime, and Iris found great difficulty in breathing, but she never once raised the thick brown veil that concealed her face, having a constant horror of meeting Charles Broughton, or some of the sunny-day friends who might recognize in this pale little working girl the happy Iris of other days.
By walking slowly she reached the bank at last, but was unable to get her check cashed immediately, as there chanced to be quite a number of people to be served before her.
One gentleman, noting the weary attitude in which she stood, awaiting her turn, placed a chair for her behind a large, fluted column near the paying teller’s window, where she might sit comfortably and partly concealed from the throng of people around her.
While Iris was seated in this place, two gentlemen, leaning against the column behind which she was ensconced, and totally ignorant of her proximity, were conversing in low, guarded tones, every word uttered being distinctly audible to Iris.
She was about to cough, or make some sound that would warn the gentlemen of her presence, when some words spoken by one of them caused her to pause.
She had recognized the voice of Gerald Dare; and Dare had mentioned a name the very sound of which sent the blood tingling through her veins like wildfire.
“I am greatly surprised at the information you have just imparted to me,” Gerald’s companion said, in answer to something the former had been telling him; and Gerald hastily resumed: “But the information is perfectly correct, I assure you. I was somewhat surprised myself, on first hearing the news, although I don’t know why St. John should not marry old Hilton’s heiress—the black-browed Isabel is eminently more suited to him than that pretty little Iris could possibly have been. Sad affair—that of little Iris, was it not?”
“I never heard the truth of the girl’s story, Dare, beyond some vague rumors that she had left Mr. Hilton’s home, and that she was not his own daughter. I never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Iris but once, and then I thought her a charming little lady. What was the trouble, anyhow?”
Leaning slightly forward in her chair, with a face that was like a mask of marble behind the thick folds of her veil, Iris listened for Gerald Dare’s answer, her heart throbbing so wildly that she half feared its loud pulsations would betray her.
She could hear the long sigh with which Gerald Dare prefaced his answer to his friend’s question, and then every word he uttered pierced her heart, and imprinted itself in characters of fire on her brain.
“I am sorry to say that the girl is unworthy of sympathy. I confess I was once sadly smitten with her charms, and when it leaked out that she had left her old home, I would not have believed any one who had dared tell me there was any guilty motive for her flight. I had my eyes opened to the truth in a very short time, however.
“You know Broughton, do you not? Yes, I mean Charley Broughton; well, what will you say of Miss Iris when I tell you that I found her at the house in Lexington Avenue. Ah, you wince, my friend; probably the mention of this house recalls the memory of many bright dollars lost inside its walls.
“Well, it was there I came upon Miss Iris, talking confidentially with Broughton, in that gentleman’s own private rooms.
“I was shocked beyond power of expression, and very nearly succeeded in incurring my host’s enmity by a too evident betrayal of my feelings on the subject. A couple of days after the encounter I fell across St. John at the club, and told him where I had seen the girl every one fancied him in love with. I know you think it was unmanly of me, but you see I owed St. John an old grudge, and I think I paid it then, in full.
“He looked like a dead man for a moment, and I could see him shiver as if some one had struck him a heavy blow; but he could not have taken the matter so much to heart as I believed at the time, or society would not to-day be canvassing the probability of his early marriage with Isabel Hilton.”
At this moment another gentleman joined the speakers, and the subject of St. John and his loves was dropped for the time.
It would be a task beyond our feeble powers to describe the feelings of Iris at the time.
She made no sound, nor gave any outward sign of the torture she was enduring, nor did she give herself entirely up to the deadly weakness that was creeping over her.
She remembered Madam Ward’s check, and watched her opportunity to present it.
This accomplished, she left the bank building with slow and faltering steps, having first concealed the money in her bosom with a vague fear that she would not long have her senses, or the power to take care of it.
Just outside the door of the bank the girl was obliged to raise her veil, as she seemed literally stifling, and the instant she had done so a lady, who had been seated in a motor car at the entrance to the bank, some fifteen minutes before Iris emerged from the building, stepped out of the vehicle and approached her, exclaiming in a soft, well-modulated voice: “I beg your pardon, but are you Maggie Gordon, in the employ of Madam Ward, of Forty-first Street? Yes? How fortunate. I have just driven down from madam’s on the chance of meeting you. Madam told me she gave you a sample of silk to match on your way home. The silk is for my dress, you know, and I chanced to remember that I have two or three yards of the same material at home, so that it would be only a useless piece of extravagance to purchase more. If you will step into the car and drive home with me I will give you the silk, and send my chauffeur with you to madam’s.”
Iris merely bowed in token that she was at Clara Neville’s service, and followed the latter to the machine, volunteering no remark as the vehicle drove away, and scarcely once glancing toward her companion, but lying back with closed eyes in a corner of the limousine, with the brown veil again concealing her white, pained face.