"No, I'm not in the least tired." Iris lifted her grey eyes frankly to Cheniston's face, and again Anstice, watching, felt a pang of whose nature he could have no doubt. He rose from his chair, with a half-formed intention of adding his entreaties to those of Cheniston, but sank back again as he realized the favour was already won.
"I will sing with pleasure." Iris turned on the music-stool to glance at her hostess, and Anstice saw her face, pearly and luminous in the soft candlelight. "Mrs. Carstairs, you like Dvorak. Shall I sing you one of his gipsy songs?"
"Please, Iris." Few words of endearment ever passed between the two, yet each felt something like real affection for the other, and Chloe's deep voice was always gentle when she spoke to Iris.
The next moment Cheniston stepped back and took up his former position on the far side of the piano; and Iris began the simple little melody which Dvorak acquired from the gipsies of his native land.
"Songs my mother taught me In the days long vanished!"
So far Anstice heard the pure, soft voice; and suddenly he felt a half-shy, half-reverential wonder as to what manner of woman she had been who had brought this adorable girl into the world. Surely Fate had been cruel to this unknown woman, inasmuch as Death had been permitted to snatch her away before her eyes had been gladdened by the vision of her child grown into this priceless, this wonderful youth, which held a hint of a yet more gracious, yet more desirable womanhood....
And then the second verse stole softly on the quiet air....
"Now I teach my children Each melodious measure...."
Again did one, at least, of Iris' hearers lose the remaining lines. For to Anstice these words brought another vision--a vision in which Iris, this fair-haired girl who looked so adorably young and sweet, bent over a little child whose rose-leaf face was a baby replica of her own....
And suddenly Anstice knew, knew irrevocably, beyond shadow of doubt, that he wanted Iris Wayne for himself, that she was the one woman in all the world he desired to make his wife....
With a wild throb of his heart he looked up--to find Bruce Cheniston's eyes fixed upon his face with a half-mocking smile in their blue depths, of whose hostile meaning there could be no question.
* * * * *
An hour or so later, when the guests had departed, and Cheniston had finished a solitary pipe downstairs, he went up, yawning, to bed. Passing his sister's open door he heard her call him, and after a second's indecision he answered the summons, wondering why she were not already asleep.