A sharp cry from Corona suddenly stopped him in full career.
"Do not, oh! do not speak of that! I—I would have given my life to have prevented Rule's loss, if I could! As for this man—this duke—he is nothing whatever to me, and never can be!"
"And yet you were ready to fall down and worship him three years ago!"
"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: