Cora was standing at one of the front windows, looking out upon the driving rain. She turned as the two gentlemen entered the room, and responded to their greeting.
"Well, now we will go in to breakfast. Did the fresh venison come in time, Cora?"
"I think so, sir."
"We cook it on the breakfast table, duke, each one for himself. Put a slice on a china plate over a chafing dish. The only way to eat a venison cutlet," said old Aaron Rockharrt, as he led the way into the breakfast room, where his eyes were immediately rejoiced by the sight of three chafing dishes filled with ignited charcoal ready for use, and a covered china dish, which he knew must contain the delicate venison cutlets.
When breakfast was over and they had all left the table, the Iron King, addressing his guest, said:
"Well, sir, I must be off to North End. I hope you will find some way of entertaining yourself within doors, for certainly this is not a day to tempt a man to seek recreation abroad. Nothing but business of importance could take me out in such weather."
"I regret that any cause should take you out, sir," replied the guest.
As soon as the noise of the wheels had died away, the duke, who had lingered in the hall to see his host depart, turned and entered the drawing room, where he found Cora as before, standing at a window looking out upon the dull November day.
"Will you permit me now to speak on the subject nearest my heart?" he pleaded, taking the hand which had dropped down by her side.
"I had rather that the subject had never been started, but under the circ.u.mstances, after what was said last night at dinner, I feel that the sooner we come to a perfect understanding the better it will be," said Cora, leading the way to a group of chairs and by a gesture inviting him to be seated. Then, to prevent him further committing himself and incurring a humiliating refusal, she herself took the initiative and said:
"If any other person than Mr. Rockharrt had made the public announcement that he did yesterday, I should have denounced the act as an unpardonable outrage; but of him I must say that he must have labored under some strange hallucination to have made such reckless a.s.sertions without one shadow of foundation. You yourself must have known that there was not one syllable of truth in his announcement."
"My dearest Mrs. Rothsay, I supposed that Mr. Rockharrt thought, even as I hoped, that our betrothal was but the question of a few days, or even of a few hours, and that he took the occasion of the family gathering to announce the fact. He had already given his consent to my suit for the blessing of your hand, and if he committed an indiscretion in that premature announcement, I did not know it. I thought such announcement might be a local custom, and I blessed him in my heart for observing it.
Cora!" he said, taking her hand and dropping his voice to a pleading tone, "dear Cora, it was only premature."
"Duke of c.u.mbervale," she answered, coldly and gravely, withdrawing her hand, "it is not premature. It was utterly false and groundless; it was the declaration of an engagement that not only had never taken place, but could never take place--an engagement forever impossible!"
"Oh, do not say that! I have kept my faith. After your grandfather"s rejection of me in your name I could rest nowhere in England. I went to the Continent, and thence to the East; but still could rest nowhere, because I was pursued by your image. When I came back to England, I learned that you had been widowed from your wedding day and almost as long as I had been absent. I determined to renew my suit, for I remembered that it was not you, but your grandfather in your name, who rejected my proposal. I remembered that you had once given me hope."
"You refer to a time of sad self-deception on my part, which led me even to unconsciously deceiving you. My imaginary preference for you was a brief hallucination. Let it be forgotten. The memory to me is humiliating. You must think of me only as the wife of Regulas Rothsay."
"As the widow, you would say. Surely that widowhood can be no bar to my suit."
"I do not call myself the widow of Rule Rothsay, but his wife," said Cora, solemnly.
"But, my dear lady, surely death has--"
"Death has not," said Cora, fervently interrupting him--"death cannot sever two souls as united as ours. I mean to spend the years I have to live on earth, temporarily and partially separated from my husband, in good works of which he would approve; with which he would sympathize and which would draw his spirit into closer communion with mine; and I hope at that ascension to the higher life which we miscall death to meet him face to face, to be able to tell him, "I have finished my work, I have kept the faith," and to be with him forever in one of the many mansions of the Father"s kingdom."
"I see," said the suitor, with a deep sigh, "that my suit would be utterly useless at present. But I will not give up the hope that is my life--the hope that you may yet look with favor on my love. I will merit that you should do so. Cora Rothsay, I will no longer vex you with my presence in this house. I will take leave of you even now, and only ask of your courtesy the use of a dog cart to take me to the North End Hotel."
"You are good, you are very good to me, and I pray with all my heart that you may meet some woman much more worthy of your grace than am I, and that you may be very happy. G.o.d bless you, Duke of c.u.mbervale," said Cora, earnestly.
He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it, bowed over it and silently left the room.
Cora stepped after him and shut the door; then she hastened across the floor, threw herself down on the sofa, buried her face in the cushions and gave way to the flood of tears that flowed in sympathy with the pain she had given. Meantime the duke went up to his room and rang for his valet.
That grave and accomplished gentleman came at once.
"Dubois, go down and order the dogcart to be at the door in half an hour; then return here to a.s.sist me."
The Frenchman bowed profoundly and withdrew.
"I have come a long way for a disappointment," murmured the rejected lover, as he threw himself languidly upon the outside of the bed and clasped his hands above his head. "A fanatic she certainly is. A lunatic also most probably. Yet I cannot get her out of my head. I would go to Canada--to Quebec--if it was not so abominably cold. Vane is there with the 110th. But the climate is too severe. I must move southward, not northward--southward, through California, and thence to the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. That will be a pleasant winter voyage. Talbot is at Sydney, and the climate, and the scenery, and the fruits and vegetables said to be the finest in the world. It will be a new experience, and if I can"t forget her among soldiers and convicts, miners and bushmen--well, then, I will come back and make a third attempt. Well, Dubois, what is it?" This question to his valet, who just then re-entered the room.
"The carriage will be at the door on time, your grace."
"Right. Now attend to my directions. I am going immediately to North End, and shall leave thereby the six o"clock express, en route for San Francisco. After I shall have left Rockhold you are to pack up my effects. I shall send a hack from the hotel to fetch them. Be very sure to be ready."
The duke went out and entered the dog cart, received his valise from his valet, gave the order to the groom and was driven off, without having again seen Cora.
But from behind the screen of her lace-curtained window she watched his departure.
"I hope he will soon forget me," she murmured, as she turned away and went down stairs to the library to look over the morning" papers, which she had not yet seen. But before she touched a paper her eyes were attracted by a letter stuck in the letter rack, directed to herself in her brother"s well known handwriting.
"To think that my grandfather should have neglected to give me my letter," she complained, as she seized and opened it.
It was dated Fort Farthermost, and announced the fact of the regiment"s arrival at the new quarters near the boundary line of Texas, "in the midst of a wilderness infested with hostile Indians, half-breeds, wild beasts, rattlesnakes and tarantulas. Only two companies are to remain here; my company--B--for one. Two first lieutenants are married men, but they have not brought their wives. One of the captains is a widower, and the other an old bachelor. In point of fact, there are only two ladies with us--the colonel"s wife and the major"s. And when they heard from me that my sister was coming to join me, they were delighted with the idea of having another lady for company. All the same, Cora, I do not advise you to come here. Will write more in a few days; must stop now to secure the mail that goes by this train--wagon and mule train to Arkansaw City, my dear."
This was the substance of the young lieutenant"s letter to his sister.
"But "all the same," I shall go," said Corona. And she sat down to answer her brother"s letter.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A DOMESTIC STORM.
It is a truth almost too trite for reference, that in the experience of every one of us there are some days in in which everything seems to go wrong. Such a day was this 13th of November to the Iron King.
When he reached North End that morning, the first thing that met him in his private office was the news that certain stocks had fallen. The news came by telegraph, and put him in a terrible temper.
This was about ten o"clock. Two hours later it was discovered that one of the minor bookkeepers, a new employe who had come well recommended about a month before, had just absconded with all he could lay his hands on--only a few thousand dollars--the merest trifle of a loss to Rockharrt & Sons, but extremely exasperating under the circ.u.mstances. So taking one provocation with another, at noon on that 13th of November old Aaron Rockharrt was about the maddest man on the face of the earth.
It was his custom to lunch with his sons in the private parlor of Mr.
Clarence"s suit of rooms at the North End Hotel, every day at two o"clock.
To-day, however, he showed no disposition to eat or drink. And although the two younger men were famishing for food they dared not go to lunch without him, or even urge him to make an effort to go with them. It was then three o"clock, an hour later than their usual hour, that Mr.
Rockharrt made a movement in the desired way by rising, stretching his limbs, and saying:
"We will go over to the hotel and get something to eat."
The three men crossed the street and went directly to Mr. Clarence"s room, where the table for luncheon was set out. But there was nothing on it but cut bread, casters, and condiments, for these men always preferred hot luncheon in cold weather, and it was yet to be dished up.
The Iron King was not in a humor to wait. He hurried the servants. And at length when the dishes, which had been punctually prepared for two o"clock, were placed on the table at twenty minutes past three, everything was overdone, dried up, and indigestible.