Mrs. Hilton, as has been mentioned, was a confirmed invalid, and Iris had been her constant attendant. She fretted and lamented her daughter’s absence now to such an extent that Mr. Hilton could not bear to enter her presence. Evelyn Hilton had been a woman of rare and unusual beauty, and of the poor remains of this loveliness she was even now foolishly proud. She was a vain, selfish woman, inordinately fond of dress and luxurious living, and with little affection to bestow on any object but self. She had never seemed to bear the real mother love for her only child, being unable to understand the noble nature of Iris, a nature high above her own as the stars above the earth. It gave her no pain now to think of her child’s probable fate, but she lamented in bitter terms the girl’s heartlessness in leaving her to the care of hirelings. “Why did you say anything to drive her away, Oscar? You know how sadly I shall miss her. I shall never be able to sleep without her voice to read to me, and no one can soothe me as Iris could, when I suffer with that dreadful pain in my head. You must find her and bring her back to me. I cannot get along without Iris; indeed, I cannot, Oscar,” the invalid had cried to her husband; and he had promised to find the girl if possible, and would certainly have made an attempt to do so had it not been for the fact of Isabel’s alarming seizure. This put all thoughts of Iris from his mind, and during the three days that followed the house was in a state of confusion impossible to describe. It appeared that every doctor of note in the city was called in to prescribe for Isabel, and it soon became known throughout the circle to which proud, dark-eyed Isabel had been wont to mingle that Oscar Hilton’s daughter’s life was despaired of. On the fourth day of Isabel’s illness Chester St. John, who had left the city on the day when Iris rejected his love, returned to his home, and, chancing to hear of the illness of Hilton’s daughter through the conversation of two gentlemen in his clubroom, at once concluded that the sufferer was the girl whom he had loved--nay, whom he still loved as he could never love another, although her own words had condemned her as a heartless coquette, and he had parted from her with bitter words of reproach and recrimination. “Iris dying! Oh, it cannot be! My bright, beautiful love,” he groaned, and the impulse to go to her home and beg them to let him look upon her face once more was too strong to be resisted. He remembered now, when he had believed that Heaven was taking her from him--remembered with an anguish keen as death--the last look he had seen in the deep blue eyes of Iris--the look of passionate love and bitter pain that had followed him, even while her cruel lips sent him from her.