When he re-entered his parlor at the Langham, he found his wife and Cora seated there, the girl reading the Court Journal to her grandmother.
"Put that tomfoolery down, Cora, and listen to me, both of you! This is Wednesday. We leave London for Liverpool on Friday morning, and sail from Liverpool for New York on Saturday. So you sent that man to me, mistress?"
"Yes, sir," without looking up.
"For my consent to a marriage with him!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Then the fellow did not mistake your meaning! Cora Haught! I could not have believed that any girl who had any of my blood in her veins could be guilty of such black treachery as to break faith with her betrothed husband, and wish to marry another, just for the snobbish ambition to be a duchess and be called 'her grace'!" said the Iron King, with all the sardonic scorn and hatred of any form of falsehood that was the one redeeming trait in his hard and cruel nature.
"Grandpa, it was not so! Indeed, it was not! Oh, consider! I had known Rule Rothsay from my childhood, and loved him with the affection a sister gives a brother; I knew of no other love, and so I mistook it for the love surpassing all others that a betrothed maiden should give her betrothed. But when I met Cumbervale and he wooed me, I loved truly for the first time! loved, as he loves me!" she concluded, with trembling lips and downcast eyes and flushed cheeks.
"Stuff and nonsense! Don't talk to me about love or any such sentimental trash! I am talking of good faith between man and woman—words of which you don't seem to know the meaning!"
"Oh, grandpa! yes, I do! But would it be good faith in me to marry Rule Rothsay, when I love Cumbervale?"
"It would be good faith to keep your word, irrespective of your feelings, and bad faith to break it in consideration of your feelings! But you are too false to know this!"