"Indeed! I did not know that. My dear, I congratulate you on your coming happiness. I can urge you no more, of course. It is a sacred duty as well as a sweet delight for you to remain here and meet your husband. So, of course, we must resign ourselves to our loss; but I hope, my dear, that you and your husband will come together at an early date and make us a long visit."
"I hope so, too, dearest lady!"
When, a little later in the evening, the Iron King heard the result of this interview, he was—as his wife had feared—dreadfully disappointed, and consequently in one of his morose and diabolical tempers, and sullenly set his despotic will against the reasonable wishes of everybody else. He announced that they should all set forward the next day. It was high time they should all be at home looking after house and business. So it was settled.
As the party needed rest, they retired very early.
That night Cora Haught had a rather strange adventure, to relate which intelligibly I must describe the situation of their rooms.
The suite occupied by the Rockharrt party was on the third floor of the house, and consisted of five rooms in a row, on the left hand side of the corridor, from the head of the stairs. The front room, overlooking an avenue, was tenanted by Mr. and Mrs. Rockharrt, the next one was occupied by Cora Haught, the third room was the private parlor of the suite, the fourth room was that of Mrs. Stillwater, and the fifth, and largest, was a double-bedded room, tenanted jointly by Mr. Fabian and Mr. Clarence. All these rooms had doors communicating with each other, and also with the corridor, all or any of which could be left open or made fast at discretion.
Cora's room, between her grandparents' bed-chamber and their private parlor, was the smallest, the closest and the warmest of the suite. That September night was sultry and stifling. Scarcely a breath of air came from without.
The girl could not sleep for the heat. Anathematizing her room as a "black hole" of Calcutta, she lay tossing from side to side, and listening for the hourly strokes of a neighboring clock, and praying for the night to be over. She heard that clock strike eleven, twelve, one.
At length Cora thought that she would go into the private parlor next her own room to get a breath of fresh air. She felt sure that there she should be perfectly safe from intrusion, as she knew that the door leading from the parlor into the corridor was secured from within by a strong bolt, and the other two doors led, the one into her own little room, and the other, on the opposite side, into Mrs. Stillwater's. So that she would be as secluded as in her own chamber.
She slipped on a thin, dark blue silk dressing gown, thrust her feet in slippers, opened the door and passed into the parlor.