ntirely. Shouldn't have remembered it now, I suppose, if it had not
been for your foolish talk about going out for a missionary to the
savages. Ah! another destiny awaits your acceptance."

Cora sighed in silence.

"Now, then. Of course you must know who this correspondent is."

"Without offense to you, grandfather, I neither know nor care,"
languidly replied the lady.

"But it is not without offense to me. You are the most eccentric and
inconsistent woman I ever met in all the course of my life. You are not
constant even to your inconstancy."

Having uttered this paradox, the old man threw himself back in his chair
and gazed at his granddaughter.

"I am not yet clear as to your meaning, sir," she said, coldly but
respectfully.

"What! Have you quite forgotten the titled dandy for whom you were near
breaking your heart three years ago? For whom you were ready to throw
over one of the best and truest men that ever lived! For whom you really
did drive Regulas Rothsay, on the proudest and happiest day of his life,
into exile and death!"

"Oh, don't! don't! grandfather! Don't!" wailed Cora, sinking on an
office stool, and dropping her hands and head on the table.

"Now, none of that, mistress. No hysterics, if you please. I won't
permit any woman about me to indulge in such tantrums. Listen to me,
ma'am. My correspondent was young Cumbervale, the noodle!"

"Then I never wish to see or hear or think of him again!" exclaimed
Cora.

"Indeed! But that is a woman all through. She will do or suffer anything
to get her own way. She will defy all her friends and relations, all
principles of truth and honor; she will move Heaven and earth, go
through fire and water, to get her own way; and when she does get it she
don't want it, and she won't have it."

"Grandfather!" pleaded Cora.

"Silence! Three years ago you would have walked over all our dead
bodies, if necessary, to marry that noble booby. And you would have
married him if it had not been for me! I would not permit you to wed
him then, because you were in honor bound to Regulas Rothsay. I shall
insist on your accepting him now, because poor Rothsay is in his grave,
and this will be the best thing to do for you to help you out of harm's
way from redskins and rattlesnakes and other reptiles. I don't think
much of the fellow; but he seems to be a harmless idiot, and is good
enough for you."

Cora answered never a word, but she felt quite sure that not even the