CHAPTER LVIII.
THE ARREST.
In less than half an hour after Mrs. Hilton’s cry had alarmed the ladies and gentlemen assembled to do honor to Isabel Hilton in this celebration of her birthday, the house was cleared of every guest with the exception of Grace and Chester St. John.
“Go home, dear, and trust me to take care of Iris as if she were indeed your sister,” Chester had said to Grace; but pretty Grace had answered with a decision and dignity quite new to her:
“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.
“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.
Isabel received them, looking unusually handsome in her bright, crimson morning robe, with all the rich color faded out of her dark face, and her lips quivering piteously as she reported that dear mamma was not any better, and that she—Isabel—was forced to stay out of the sick room because she could not listen to poor mamma’s wild and improbable fancies.
Grace understood the yearning look in her brother’s eyes, and proffered a timid request for a word with Iris; but Isabel declared that Iris could not be induced to leave her mother’s bedside for a moment, and the visitors could not persist any further.
During their brief stay she found an opportunity of speaking alone with Chester.
“This is a cruel trial, dear Chester; I long to hear some words of sympathy from your lips; I have sore need of your love now; it is all so lonesome and terrible with papa always in the sick room, and the house silent as the grave.”
She had clasped her small hands on his shoulder, and bent her head upon them, so that her face was very near his own; but although Chester smoothed her dark, glossy hair with a gentle touch, he did not give her the caress she expected, for between them there arose a vision he could not banish—the vision of a sweet mignonne face, a pair of limpid, violet eyes, and a pretty, bright-tressed head that he had lately seen bowed in bitter sorrow.
The struggle going on within his heart was almost maddening. Could he, with his chivalrous sense of honor, ask this girl, who had openly confessed her love for him, to release him from his promise, that he might devote his life to the clearing of Iris Tresilian’s name, and afterward to the task of winning Iris’ forgiveness for having doubted her?
His conscience told him his first duty was to the woman who was his promised wife, and for the first time in his life he found it hard to obey this silent, inward voice.
While he was taking his leave of Isabel a loud ring at the doorbell startled them, and his heart throbbed with an unaccountable feeling of foreboding.
Grace was already in the vestibule, and opened the door before a servant had time to answer the summons. Two men stood on the doorstep, one of whom exclaimed, without preface:
“We are looking for a girl whose name, we believe, is Aris, or Iris Tresilian, but who calls herself Maggie Gordon.”
While speaking the man had coolly unbuttoned his coat and exhibited a shining shield, at sight of which Grace uttered a cry of terror, and clung to her brother’s arm, trembling in every limb.
“Great heavens! There is some terrible mistake,” ejaculated Chester, asking, as the men came across the threshold: “With what do you charge Iris Tresilian?” to which the man replied in his usual cool, matter-of-fact tone:
“With the theft of two hundred dollars. Madam Marie Ward, of Forty-first Street, is her accuser.”