At sight of her both of the gentlemen started, and Iris in her turn--having recognized in one of these men the gentleman whose face had so strangely started her on the previous evening--uttered an exclamation of dismay at first, but quickly recovering herself, bent her head in acknowledgment of her recognition of him, and hurried on without a glance into the face of his companion, with whom she had often danced and chatted in the days when she believed herself the young daughter and joint heiress of Oscar Hilton. Iris had not gone two dozen paces away from them when the companion of Charles Broughton clasped the latter’s arm excitedly. “What can be the matter, Charley? Do you know anything about it? Iris Hilton is not the girl whom I would expect to find walking the streets at night alone, and at this hour, too. Why, Broughton, it is nearly half past eleven. I shall follow her--there must be something wrong.” With these words, Gerald Dare, who had been a secret admirer of Oscar Hilton’s younger daughter, was about to start in pursuit of the lonely girl, but the firm grip of Charles Broughton’s hand upon his arm restrained him. At the first mention of the name “Iris,” a gray, ashen pallor had crept over Broughton’s face, and his breath had been quickly indrawn, like that of one who was drowning. “Walk with me, Dare, to the nearest café--that deathly feeling of weakness is creeping over me again. You know how ill I was last night!” His voice was so faint and tremulous that Dare was really alarmed, and accompanied his friend to a café, thus giving Iris a chance to escape his espionage, exactly the object which Broughton desired to attain. Iris pursued her way to the doctor’s residence unmolested, and was fortunate enough to find that gentleman still in his office, he having just returned from visiting one of his serious cases. Iris would have left the place at once on stating her errand, and gaining his promise to follow her immediately, but something in the expression of her wan, white face, with its innate and unmistakable look of refinement, had led the doctor to detain her. “My child, you are yourself sadly in need of a physician’s care. You are not fit to be out at night alone. Wait just one moment, and I will have my gig made ready, and you and I will drive to Mrs. Mason’s together.” They reached the tenement in which Mrs. Mason resided, some minutes after midnight; but, as the old physician saw at a glance, his coming had been in vain. The grim King of Terrors had entered before him, and the white, still form beside which Jenny Mason knelt was only a senseless and feelingless statue of clay--all that remained was the earthly tenement whence the immortal spirit had fled. We will not linger over the days that followed; suffice it to say that the last dollar of which Iris had been possessed when she left the home of her reputed father was spent in defraying the funeral expenses of Mrs. Mason.