s?"

"Yes, sir," without looking up.

"For my consent to a marriage with him!"

"Yes, sir!"

"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 p