“Then the fellow did not mistake your meaning!  Cora Haught!  I could not have believed that any girl who had any of my blood in her veins could be guilty of such black treachery as to break faith with her betrothed husband, and wish to marry another, just for the snobbish ambition to be a duchess and be called ’her grace’!” said the Iron King, with all the sardonic scorn and hatred of any form of falsehood that was the one redeeming trait in his hard and cruel nature.

“Grandpa, it was not so!  Indeed, it was not!  Oh, consider!  I had known Rule Rothsay from my childhood, and loved him with the affection a sister gives a brother; I knew of no other love, and so I mistook it for the love surpassing all others that a betrothed maiden should give her betrothed.  But when I met Cumbervale and he wooed me, I loved truly for the first time! loved, as he loves me!” she concluded, with trembling lips and downcast eyes and flushed cheeks.

“Stuff and nonsense!  Don’t talk to me about love or any such sentimental trash!  I am talking of good faith between man and woman—­words of which you don’t seem to know the meaning!”

“Oh, grandpa! yes, I do!  But would it be good faith in me to marry Rule Rothsay, when I love Cumbervale?”

“It would be good faith to keep your word, irrespective of your feelings, and bad faith to break it in consideration of your feelings!  But you are too false to know this!”

“Oh, sir! pray do not set your face against my marriage with Cumbervale, or insist on my marrying Rule!  It would not be for Rule’s good,” pleaded Cora.

“No; Heaven knows it would not be for his good!  It had been better for Rothsay that he had been blown up in the explosion that killed his father, than that he had ever set eyes on your false face!  But you have given him your word, and you must keep it, or never look me in the face again!  You shall be married as soon as we reach Rockhold.”

Cora raised her tearful face from her hands, and looked astonished and wretched.

“Oh, you may gaze, but it is true.  The fortune hunter has discovered that he is on a false scent.  There is no fortune on the trail.  I told him everything about you.  I told him that you were not my heiress at all, because I had two sons who would inherit all my property; that you were not even your father’s heiress, because you had a brother who would inherit the larger portion of his; that, in point of fact, you were only moderately provided for.  He was startled, I assure you.  I also told him that for years you had been engaged to a young printer in your native country, who would probably be the next governor of his native State.  He bowed himself out.  I engaged our passage to New York by the Saturday’s steamer.  You will never see the little dandy again.  He was after a fortune, and finding that you have none, he has forsaken you—­and served you right, for a base, treacherous, and contemptible woman, unworthy