lord, now presented itself
to Hugh's mind under a new point of view. He tried in vain to resist
the impression that had been produced on him. A sense of injury, which
he was unable to justify to himself, took possession of him. Come what
might of it, he determined to set at rest the doubts of which he was
ashamed, by communicating with Iris. His card-case proved to be empty
when he opened it; but there were letters in his pocket, addressed to
him at his hotel in London. Removing the envelope from one of these, he
handed it to the servant: "Take that to Miss Henley, and ask when I can
see her."

The girl left him in the passage, and went upstairs to the
drawing-room.

In the flimsily-built little house, he could hear the heavy step of a
man, crossing the room above, and then the resonant tones of a man's
voice raised as if in anger. Had she given him already the right to be
angry with her? He thought of the time, when the betrayal of Lord
Harry's vindictive purpose in leaving England had frightened her--when
he had set aside his own sense of what was due to him, for her
sake--and had helped her to communicate, by letter, with the man whose
fatal ascendency over Iris had saddened his life. Was what he heard,
now, the return that he had deserved?

After a short absence, the servant came back with a message.

"Miss Henley begs you will excuse her. She will write to you."

Would this promised letter be like the other letters which he had
received from her in Scotland? Mountjoy's gentler nature reminded him
that he owed it to his remembrance of happier days, and truer
friendship, to wait and see.

He was just getting into the cab, on his return to London, when a
closed carriage, with one person in it, passed him on its way to
Redburn Road. In that person he recognised Mr. Henley. As the
cab-driver mounted to his seat, Hugh saw the carriage stop at Number
Five.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PARTING SCENE

THE evening had advanced, and the candles had just been lit in
Mountjoy's sitting-room at the hotel.

His anxiety to hear from Iris had been doubled and trebled, since he
had made the discovery of her father's visit to the doctor's house, at
a time when it was impossible to doubt that Lord Harry was with her.
Hugh's jealous sense of wrong was now mastered by the nobler emotions
which filled him with pity and alarm, when he thought of Iris placed
between the contending claims of two such men as the heartless Mr.
Henley