The two lingered over the luncheon until it was time for the duke to start for the depot.

“I will send over for my two sons, that you may bid them good-by,” said Mr. Rockharrt, and he turned to the waiter, and told him to go and dispatch a messenger to that effect.

Messrs. Fabian and Clarence soon put in an appearance, and expressed their surprise and regret at the sudden departure of their father’s guest, and their hope and trust to see him again in the near future.  Neither of them seemed to know that the betrothal declared at the dinner table on the night before had no foundation in fact.  The duke thanked them for their good wishes, invited them to visit him if they should find themselves in England, and then he took a final leave of the Rockharrts, entered the carriage, and drove off, through a pouring rain, to the railway station—­and out of their lives forever.

“A fine thing Mistress Rothsay has done!” exclaimed the Iron King, when his guest had gone, and he explained Cora’s action.

Corona had spent the day at Rockhold drearily enough.  She felt reasonably sure that her rejection of the duke’s hand would deeply offend her grandfather and precipitate a crisis in her own life.  When she had finished her letter to her brother, in which she told him of the death of Mr. Rockharrt’s wife and added her own resolution soon to set out to join him in his distant fort, she began to make preparations for her journey in the event of having to leave Rockhold suddenly.  She knew her grandfather’s temper and disposition, and felt that she must hold herself in readiness to meet any emergencies brought about by their manifestations.  So she set about her preparations.

She had not much to do.  The trunks that she had packed and dispatched to the North End railway station three months before at the hour when her own journey was arrested by the accident to her grandfather, had remained in storage there ever since.

The contents of her large valise, which was to have been her own traveling companion in her long journey to and through the “Great American Desert,” and which was well packed with several changes of clothes and with small dressing, sewing and writing cases, supplied all her wants during the three months of her further sojourn at Rockhold.

She had only now to collect these together, cause all the soiled articles to be laundered, and then repack the valise.  This occupied her all the afternoon of the short November day.

At six o’clock she came down into the parlor to see that the lamps were trimmed and lighted, and the coal fire stirred up and replenished, so that her grandfather should find the room warm and comfortable on his return home.  Then she brought out his dressing gown and slippers, hung the first over his arm chair and put the last on the warm hearthstones.

At length the carriage wheels were heard faintly over the soft, wet avenue and under the pouring rain.