“Quite right, Peter; I will attend to the girl myself,” whispered Mr. Hilton, unconscious that any other ear than his own had caught Peter’s words. Peter hurried from the room with his eyes suspiciously moistened and red; he had loved the gentle Iris very dearly. Mr. Hilton shortly followed him, pausing first to make a polite apology to his guests for the necessity which obliged him to tear himself away from them for a few moments only. From what Isabel had overheard, she knew that Iris had returned ill, and in trouble, at this late hour, and her eyes instinctively sought those of the man upon whose arm she leaned. His face was white and set, and his lips pressed themselves tightly together, but he did not avoid her gaze. He drew her hand closer within his arm, and led her to a spot a little distance removed from the rest of the company. “Isabel,” he said gently, as if he had read aright the fear in her eyes, “you are my promised wife, and Iris has sinned beyond the possibility of forgiveness--you need not fear that I will give her one thought that would be a wrong to you. I know your father will deal gently with her, but you, Isabel, you who have loved her as a sister almost all her life, you will be kind to her if she comes to you, penitent and suffering; will you not promise me this, Isabel, my wife?” He spoke the last two words with a peculiar emphasis, as if trying to impress on his heart and brain that she was really to bear this relationship to him. She smiled up into his face, while tears dimmed her lustrous eyes as she answered: “Were she the vilest sinner on earth, I would receive her gladly--joyfully, and do everything in my power to reclaim her.” As Isabel uttered these words, Chester St. John bent suddenly over her and touched his lips gently to her forehead. It was the first time he had ever caressed her, and the warm blood crept into her dusky cheeks until they rivaled the crimson of the rose at her breast, but she knew that the kiss was given only for Iris’ sake, and her heart grew hard and bitter toward that hapless girl. “She shall not return to this house though she die of starvation on the street,” was Isabel’s thought, and at the very first opportunity that offered she stole quietly from the room and made her way to the apartment where she expected to find her father and the unhappy Iris. CHAPTER LVI. A CRUEL SUSPICION. “Oh, madam, I cannot work any longer; something terrible has happened to Maggie; I have felt so uneasy all day about her, and now, see, it is almost night, and she has not yet returned. I must go and look for her; my hands tremble so that I can no longer hold my needle.” The speaker was Jenny Mason, and the time almost evening of the day on which Iris had been sent to the bank by Madam Ward.