Rose Stillwater raised her beautiful soft blue eyes, brimming with tears that ever came at will, gazed sorrowfully, penitently, deprecatingly, into the lady’s face and cooed: 

“I feel as if it were a sin to refuse you!  You who have been a mother to me.  And, oh! how dearly I should love to stay with you and wait on you forever and forever!  I could not conceive a happier life!  But duty constrains me to deny myself this delight, and to wrench myself away from all I love.”

“Duty?  What duty, my dear girl?  I do not understand that.  You have no children to take care of, no house to look after, no husband to please, for Captain Stillwater is at sea.  What duty, then, can you have which is so pressing as to keep you away from your friends?”

“The Queen of Sheba was spoken and passed by the Liverpool and New York ocean steamer Arctic on Saturday, within three days’ sail of land.  And he may arrive here any hour.  I must wait to receive him.”

“Indeed!  I did not know that.  My dear, I congratulate you on your coming happiness.  I can urge you no more, of course.  It is a sacred duty as well as a sweet delight for you to remain here and meet your husband.  So, of course, we must resign ourselves to our loss; but I hope, my dear, that you and your husband will come together at an early date and make us a long visit.”

“I hope so, too, dearest lady!”

When, a little later in the evening, the Iron King heard the result of this interview, he was—­as his wife had feared—­dreadfully disappointed, and consequently in one of his morose and diabolical tempers, and sullenly set his despotic will against the reasonable wishes of everybody else.  He announced that they should all set forward the next day.  It was high time they should all be at home looking after house and business.  So it was settled.

As the party needed rest, they retired very early.

That night Cora Haught had a rather strange adventure, to relate which intelligibly I must describe the situation of their rooms.

The suite occupied by the Rockharrt party was on the third floor of the house, and consisted of five rooms in a row, on the left hand side of the corridor, from the head of the stairs.  The front room, overlooking an avenue, was tenanted by Mr. and Mrs. Rockharrt, the next one was occupied by Cora Haught, the third room was the private parlor of the suite, the fourth room was that of Mrs. Stillwater, and the fifth, and largest, was a double-bedded room, tenanted jointly by Mr. Fabian and Mr. Clarence.  All these rooms had doors communicating with each other, and also with the corridor, all or any of which could be left open or made fast at discretion.

Cora’s room, between her grandparents’ bed-chamber and their private parlor, was the smallest, the closest and the warmest of the suite.  That September night was sultry and stifling.  Scarcely a breath of air came from without.