"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 iron will of the Iron King could ever coerce her into marriage with any man, least of all with the man whose memory was identified with her heart's tragedy. The old man continued his monologue. "The best thing about the fellow is his constancy. He was after your imaginary fortune once. I am sure of that. And he was so dazzled by the illumination of that _ignis fatuus_ that he didn't see you, perhaps, and didn't recognize how much he really cared for you. At all events, in his letter to me--and, by the way, it is very strange that he should write to me after the snubbing I gave him in London," said the Iron King, reflectively. Cora did not think that was strange. She, at least, felt sure that it was as impossible for the young duke to take offense at the rudeness of the old iron man as at the raging of a dog or the tearing of a bull. But she did not drop a hint of this to the egotist, who never imagined passive insolence to be at the bottom of the duke's forbearance.