"What! Have you quite forgotten the titled dandy for whom you were near breaking your heart three years ago? For whom you were ready to throw over one of the best and truest men that ever lived! For whom you really did drive Regulas Rothsay, on the proudest and happiest day of his life, into exile and death!"
"Oh, don't! don't! grandfather! Don't!" wailed Cora, sinking on an office stool, and dropping her hands and head on the table.
"Now, none of that, mistress. No hysterics, if you please. I won't permit any woman about me to indulge in such tantrums. Listen to me, ma'am. My correspondent was young Cumbervale, the noodle!"
"Then I never wish to see or hear or think of him again!" exclaimed Cora.
"Indeed! But that is a woman all through. She will do or suffer anything to get her own way. She will defy all her friends and relations, all principles of truth and honor; she will move Heaven and earth, go through fire and water, to get her own way; and when she does get it she don't want it, and she won't have it."
"Silence! Three years ago you would have walked over all our dead bodies, if necessary, to marry that noble booby. And you would have married him if it had not been for me! I would not permit you to wed him then, because you were in honor bound to Regulas Rothsay. I shall insist on your accepting him now, because poor Rothsay is in his grave, and this will be the best thing to do for you to help you out of harm's way from redskins and rattlesnakes and other reptiles. I don't think much of the fellow; but he seems to be a harmless idiot, and is good enough for you."
Cora answered never a word, but she felt quite sure that not even the iron will of the Iron King could ever coerce her into marriage with any man, least of all with the man whose memory was identified with her heart's tragedy. The old man continued his monologue.
"The best thing about the fellow is his constancy. He was after your imaginary fortune once. I am sure of that. And he was so dazzled by the illumination of that _ignis fatuus_ that he didn't see you, perhaps, and didn't recognize how much he really cared for you. At all events, in his letter to me--and, by the way, it is very strange that he should write to me after the snubbing I gave him in London," said the Iron King, reflectively.