He turned sharply, stared at her mockingly, and then demanded: 

“Come!  Shall I call Cumbervale back?  Tell him that you have changed your whirligig mind, and are ready to marry him, if he will only take time by the forelock and return before you shift around again?  I can easily do that.  I can send a telegram that will over-take him and turn him back so promptly that he may be here in twenty-four hours!  Come!  Shall I do that?”

Corona, who had been gazing at the mocking speaker scarcely knowing whether he spoke in earnest or in irony, now answered despairingly: 

“Oh, no, no! not for the world!  I have not changed my mind.  I could not do so for any cause.”

“Then don’t stop me.  I’m in haste.  I am going to North End.  Don’t let me find you here when I come back.  Don’t let me ever see or hear from you again, without your consent to marry the man I have chosen for you.  John!”

“Oh, sir, consider—­” began Corona, pleadingly.

“John!” vociferated the Iron King, pushing rudely past her.

The old servant came hurrying up, helped his master on with his overcoat and with his rubber coat, then gave him his hat and gloves, and finally hoisted a large umbrella to hold over his master’s head as he passed from the house to the carriage in front.

Corona stood watching until the carriage rolled away and old John came back into the hall and closed the door.  Then she returned to the library and sank sobbing into the big leathern chair.  She now realized for the first time what the parting with her grandfather would be—­the parting with the gray old man who had been the ogre of her childhood, the terror of her youth, and the autocrat of her maturity, and yet whom, by all the laws of nature, she tenderly loved, and whom by the commandment of God she was bound to honor.

She glanced mechanically toward the card rack, and saw there another letter in the handwriting of her brother—­a letter that had come in the morning’s mail and had been stuck up there, and in the excitement of the hour had been neglected or forgotten.

She seized it eagerly and tore it open, wondering what could have urged Sylvan to write so soon after his last letter.

It was dated three weeks later than the one she had received only the day previous, the first one having, no doubt, been delayed somewhere along the uncertain route.

In this letter Sylvan complained that he had not received a word from his dear sister since leaving Governor’s Island, and mentioned that he himself had written all along the line of march and three times since the arrival of his regiment at Fort Farthermost.

But he admitted, also, that the mails beyond the regular United States mail roads were very uncertain and irregular.  Then he came to the object of this particular epistle.