"It was a brief insanity--a self-delusion. That is past. Cumbervale never was and never can be anything to me. No man can ever be anything to me! I could not live Rule's wife, but I will die Rule's widow; and I do not care how soon--the sooner the better, if it were the Lord's will!" moaned Corona. "Drivel!" angrily exclaimed old Aaron Rockharrt. "I am tired of your idiotic, imbecile hypocrisies! Here are two men driven away by your unprincipled vacillation--to call your conduct by the lightest name. One driven to his death; one driven, it may be, to his ruin. It is quite time you were sent to follow your victims. Look you! I am just about to start for North End. I shall return home at my usual time this evening. Do not let me find you here when I arrive, for I never wish to see your false face again!" said the Iron King, rising from his arm chair and striding from the room. Corona started up and ran after him, pleading, imploring-- "Grandfather! Dear grandfather! Oh, I beg pardon! I forgot! Sir! sir! Oh, do not part from me in this way!" He turned sharply, stared at her mockingly, and then demanded: "Come! Shall I call Cumbervale back? Tell him that you have changed your whirligig mind, and are ready to marry him, if he will only take time by the forelock and return before you shift around again? I can easily do that. I can send a telegram that will over-take him and turn him back so promptly that he may be here in twenty-four hours! Come! Shall I do that?" Corona, who had been gazing at the mocking speaker scarcely knowing whether he spoke in earnest or in irony, now answered despairingly: "Oh, no, no! not for the world! I have not changed my mind. I could not do so for any cause." "Then don't stop me. I'm in haste. I am going to North End. Don't let me find you here when I come back. Don't let me ever see or hear from you again, without your consent to marry the man I have chosen for you. John!" "Oh, sir, consider--" began Corona, pleadingly. "John!" vociferated the Iron King, pushing rudely past her. The old servant came hurrying up, helped his master on with his overcoat and with his rubber coat, then gave him his hat and gloves, and finally hoisted a large umbrella to hold over his master's head as he passed from the house to the carriage in front. Corona stood watching until the carriage rolled away and old John came back into the hall and closed the door. Then she returned to the library and sank sobbing into the big leathern chair. She now realized for the first time what the parting with her grandfather would be--the parting with the gray old man who had been the ogre of her childhood, the terror of her youth, and the autocrat of her maturity, and yet whom, by all the laws of nature, she tenderly loved, and whom by the commandment of God she was bound to honor.