“See here, mistress!” he said.  “You don’t seem to rejoice in this news.  What is the matter with you?  Have any of these English foplings and lordlings, with more peers in their pedigrees than pennies in their pockets, turned your head?  If so, it is time for me to take you home.”

Cora did not reply.  Only the night before, at the ball given by the Marchioness of Netherby, the Duke of Cumbervale had proposed to her, and had been referred to her grandfather.  He was coming that very morning to ask the hand of the supposed heiress of the Iron King.  Cora was that very day intending to write to Rule and tell him the whole truth, and ask him to release her from her engagement; and she knew full well that he would have no alternative but to grant her request.

“Why do you not answer me, Corona?  What is the matter with you?” again demanded old Aaron Rockharrt.

But at that moment a waiter entered, and laid a card on the table before the old gentleman.  He took it up and read: 

    The duke of Cumbervale.

“What in the deuce does the young fellow want of me?  Show him into the parlor, William, and say that I will be with him in a few minutes.”

The waiter left the room to do his errand, and was soon followed by Mr. Rockharrt, who found the young duke pacing rather restlessly up and down the room.

“Good morning, sir,” said old Aaron, with stiff politeness.

The visitor turned and saluted his host.

“Will you not be seated?” said Mr. Rockharrt, waving his hand toward sofa and chairs.

The visitor bowed and sat down.  The host took another chair and waited.  There was silence for a short time.  The old man seemed expectant, the young man embarrassed.  At length, when the latter opened his mouth and spoke, no pearls and diamonds of wisdom and goodness dropped from his lips; he said: 

“It is a fine day.”

“Yes, yes,” admitted the Iron King, taking his hands from his knees, and drawing himself up with the sigh of a man badly bored—­“for London.  We wouldn’t call this a fine day in America.  But I have heard it said that it is always a fine day in England when it don’t pour.”

“Yes,” admitted the visitor; and then he driveled into the most inane talk about climates, for you see this was the first time the poor young fellow had ever ventured to

    “Beard the lion in his den,”

so to speak, by asking:  a stern old gentleman for a daughter’s hand, and this Iron King was a very formidable-looking beast indeed.

At length, Mr. Rockharrt, feeling sure that his visitor had come upon business—­though he did not know of what sort—­said: 

“I think, sir, that you are here upon some affairs.  If it is about railway shares—­”

The old man was stopped short by the surprised and insolent stare of the young duke.

“I know nothing of railway shares, sir,” he answered.