“There was some mistake--oh, my love! My precious little Iris, if I could see you now you would make it plain to me,” he thought, and walked directly from the club to Oscar Hilton’s, his heart turning sick within him as he approached the house, and a terrible fear came to him that he might see long streamers of crape and white ribbon streaming from the bell handle. “I think the sight would have killed me,” he murmured, as he stood on the threshold awaiting admittance a few minutes later. On this day Isabel had been pronounced “out of danger,” and Oscar Hilton consented to leave her bedside long enough to see Mr. St. John. The desire to win this rich man for his daughter’s husband instantly revived in the father’s heart at sight of Chester’s card, and he left the presence of the girl who had been so near to the portals of death with no prayer of thanksgiving in his heart to the God who had spared her to him, but with wild schemes running through his brain for her worldly advancement. He knew that when she gained her strength again she would stop at nothing to bring this proud, handsome Chester St. John to her feet, and he himself had a plan by which he hoped to aid her in the accomplishment of this purpose. On entering the little reception room into which a servant had shown St. John, Mr. Hilton was startled by the almost ghastly pallor of the young man’s face. He was not long in making the discovery that it was fears for the life of Iris, and no anxiety for Isabel, that had wrought this change in the strong, proud man before him, and a fierce and unreasoning hatred sprang to life in his heart for the hapless child whose sweet, young face had had power to awaken such a wondrous depth of love in this man’s soul, a love that his own queenly Isabel had failed as yet to inspire. The plans which had been hitherto vague and shadowy took sudden form and shape in his scheming brain, and when Chester St. John left the house, nearly an hour later, Oscar Hilton watched his retreating form with a look almost amounting to triumph. “I have shaken his faith in her, even as she herself could not shake it, although she assured him she had no love for him, and led him to think her a coquette. He will not seek her now, although he does not as yet believe--as I hinted to him--that she has left my roof for the arms of some unworthy lover. He shall believe it, though--if Evelyn has not forgotten her cunning in imitating her daughter’s pretty penmanship.” CHAPTER XLIX. THE CHILD OF AN ESCAPED CONVICT. In all her life Iris had never experienced such a feeling of horror as that which filled her heart on finding that she had been trapped to the house on Lexington Avenue by the man whom we know as Charley Broughton. “Let me go away. What wrong have I ever done you that you should terrify me thus? What can you want of me?” she faltered, staggering like one under the influence of liquor, as she attempted to walk to the door.