"Do you appreciate the gravity of your own position, sir, under the circ.u.mstances?" sternly demanded the Iron King.

"I--don't--understand you," said the skipper, in evident perplexity.

"You don't? That is strange. You are the last man--the last person--who saw Governor-elect Rothsay alive, at eleven o'clock on the night of his disappearance. After that hour he was missing, and you had run away."

The young sailor smiled.

"Steamed away, and sailed away, you should say, sir. I see the suspicion to which your words point, and will answer them at once: On that night in question I was a guest of the Crockett House. I was absent from that house only half an hour--from a quarter to eleven to a quarter after eleven--during which time I walked to this house, saw the governor-elect, and walked back to the hotel, only to pay my bill, take a hack and drive to the railway station. Do you think that in half an hour I could have done all that and murdered the governor, and made away with his body besides, Mr. Rockharrt?"

"You would have to prove the truth of your words, sir," replied the Iron King.

"That is easily done by the people at the hotel. I did not tell them where I was going. I never even thought of telling them. But they know I was only gone half an hour; for before going out, or just as I was going out, I ordered the carriage to be ready to take me to the depot at a quarter past eleven."

"They may have forgotten all about you."

"Not at all. I am an old customer, though a young man. They know me very well."

"Then it is very strange that when every anxious inquiry was made for this latest visitor of the governor-elect, these hotel people did not come forward and name you."

"But I repeat, sir, that they did not know that I was that latest visitor. I did not think of telling any one that I was going to see Rothsay before I went, or of telling them that I had been to see him after I went. They had no more reason to identify me with that late caller than any other guest at the hotel, or, in fact, any other man in the world. Come, Mr. Rockharrt, you have complimented me with one of the blackest suspicions that could wrong an honest man, but I will not quarrel with you. I know very well that the last person seen with a missing man is often suspected of his taking off. As for me, I invite the most searching investigation."

"Why did you come here, after so long an interval?" demanded the Iron King, in no way mollified by the moderation of his visitor.

"As I explained to you, I come now because I have just heard that I had been advertised for; and after this long interval because I have been for months at sea. I had, however, another motive for coming--to tell you of the strange manner of Regulas Rothsay during my interview with him--a manner that does not seem to have been observed by any one else, for all speak and write of his health and extraordinarily good spirits on the evening of his arrival in the city only a few hours before I saw him, when he seemed very far from being in good health or good spirits.

In fact, a more utterly broken man I never saw in my life."

"Ah! ah! What is this you tell me? Give me particulars! Give me particulars!" said the Iron King, rising and standing over his visitor.

"Indeed, I do not think I can give you particulars. The effect he seemed to produce was that of a general prostration of body and mind. On coming into the room where I waited for him, he looked pale and haggard; he tottered rather than walked; he dropped into his chair rather than sat down in it; his hands fell upon the arms rather than grasped them; he was gloomy, absent-minded, and when he spoke at all, seemed to speak with great effort."

"Ah! ah! ah!" exclaimed the Iron King.

"I thought the fatigue and excitement of the day had been too much for him. I made my visit very short, and soon bade him good-night. He wished me a prosperous voyage, but did not invite me to visit him on my return--a kindness that he had never before omitted."

"Ah, ah ah!" again exclaimed old Aaron Rockharrt.

"Then I thought his manner and appearance only the effect of excessive fatigue and excitement. Now, seen in the light of future events, I attach a more serious meaning to them."

"What! what! what!" demanded the Iron King.

"I think that some fatal news, from some quarter or other, had reached him; or that some heavy sorrow had fallen upon him; or, worse than all, sudden insanity had overtaken him! That, under the lash of one or another, or all of these, he fled the house and the city, and--made away with himself."

"Now, Heaven forbid!" exclaimed old Aaron Rockharrt, dropping into his chair.

"One favor I have to ask you, Mr. Rockharrt, and that is, that the most searching investigation be made of my movements on that fatal evening of the governor's disappearance."

"It shall be done," said the Iron King.

"I shall remain at the David Crockett until all the friends of the late governor are satisfied so far as I am concerned. And now, having said all I have to say, I will bid you good morning," concluded the visitor as he arose, took up his hat, bowed, and left the room.

Old Aaron Rockharrt returned to the breakfast table, where his subservient family waited.

The coffee, that had been sent to the kitchen to be kept hot, was brought up again, with hot rolls and hot broiled partridges.

The old man resumed his breakfast in silence. He did not think proper to speak of his visitor, nor did any member of the family party venture to question him.

And this was well, so far as Cora was concerned.

Any allusion to the agonizing subject of her husband's mysterious disappearance was more than she could well bear; and to have hinted in her presence that some hidden sorrow had driven him to self-destruction might almost have wrecked her reason.

Cora now never mentioned his name; yet, as after events proved, he was never for a moment absent from her mind.

The old grandmother, who could not speak to Cora on the subject, and who dared not speak to her lord and master on any subject that he did not first broach, and yet who felt that she must talk to some one of that which oppressed her bosom so heavily, at length confided to her youngest son.

"I do think Cora's heart is breaking in this suspense, Clarence! If Rule had died there would have been an end of it, and she would have known the worst and submitted to the inevitable! But this awful suspense, anxiety, uncertainty as to his fate, is just killing her! I wish we could do something to save her, Clarence!"

"I wish so, too, mother! I see how she is failing and sinking, and I own that this surprises me! I really thought that Cora was fascinated by that fellow in London." (This was the irreverent manner in which Mr.

Clarence spoke of his grace the Duke of c.u.mbervale.) "And I thought that she only married Rothsay from a sense of duty, keeping her word, and all that sort of thing! I can't understand her grieving herself to death for him now!"

"Oh, Clarence! she was fascinated by the rank and splendor and personal attractions of the young duke! Her fancy, vanity, ambition and imagination were fired; but her heart was never touched! She had not seen Rothsay for so long a time that his image had somewhat faded in her memory when this splendid young fellow crossed her path and dazzled her for a time! It was a brief madness--nothing more! But you can see for yourself how really she loved Rothsay when you see that anxiety for his fate is breaking her heart."

"I see, mother dear; but I don't understand! And I don't know what on earth we can do for her! If my father does not think proper to suggest something, we must not, for if we should do so it would make matters much worse."

"Yes," sighed the old lady; and the subject was dropped.

Clarence had said that he did not understand Cora's state of mind. No; nor did old Mrs. Rockharrt. How could they, when Cora had not understood herself, until suffering brought self-knowledge?

From her childhood up she had loved Rule Rothsay as a sister loves a favorite brother. In her girlhood, knowing no stronger love, on the strength of this she accepted the offered hand of Rothsay, and was engaged to be married to him. She meant to have been faithful to him; but it was a long engagement, during which she traveled with her grandparents for three years, while the memory of her calmly loved betrothed husband grew rather dim. Then came her meeting with the handsome and accomplished young Duke of c.u.mbervale, and the infatuation, the hallucination that enslaved her imagination for a period. Then began the mental conflict between inclination and duty, ending in her resolution to forget her English lover and to be true to Rule.

Up to the very wedding day she had suppressed and controlled her feelings with heroic firmness, but on the evening of that day, while waiting for her husband, the long, severe tension of her nerves utterly gave way, and when found in a paroxysm of tears and questioned by him, in her wretchedness and misery she had confessed the infidelity of her heart and pleaded for time to conquer it.

She had expected bitter reproaches, but there were none. She had dreaded fierce anger, but there was none. She had antic.i.p.ated obduracy, but there was none. There was nothing but intense suffering, divine compa.s.sion, and infinite renunciation. He pitied her. He soothed her. He defended her from the reproaches of her own conscience. He protected her by an imposed provision that for her own sake she should not tell others what she had told him. And then--

He laid down all the honors that his life-long toil and self-denial had won for her sake, and he went out from his triumphs, went out from her life--out, out into the outer darkness of oblivion, to be seen no more of men, to be heard of no more by men. All for her sake. And before the majesty of such infinite love, such infinite renunciation, her whole soul bowed down in adoration. Yes, at last, in the hour of losing him she loved him as he longed to be loved by her. She had but one desire on earth--to be at his side. But one prayer, and that was her "vital breath"--for his return.

She felt herself to be unworthy of the measureless love that he had given her--that he still gave her, if he still lived, for his love had known no shadow of turning, nor ever would suffer change.

But, oh! where in s.p.a.ce was he? How could she reach him? How could she make him hear the cry of her heart?

One message, like a voice from the grave, had, indeed, come to her from him since his disappearance, but it had been sent before he left the house; it was in the letter he had written and placed in the secret drawer of her writing desk before he went forth that fatal night, a "wanderer through the world's wilderness."

She had found it on that day, about three weeks after his loss, when she had come into the parlor for the first time since her illness, and when, left alone for a few minutes by her grandmother, she had gone to her writing desk, and in the idleness of misery had begun carelessly, aimlessly, to turn over her papers. In the same mood she pressed the spring of the secret drawer, and it sprang open and projected the letter before her. She recognized his handwriting, seized the paper and opened it. It contained only a few words of farewell, with a prayer for her happiness and a parting blessing.

There was no allusion made to the cause of their separation. Probably Rule had thought of the letter falling into other hands than hers; so he had refrained from referring to her secret, lest she should suffer reproach from her family.

Cora read this letter with deep emotion over and over again, until she found herself staring at the lines without gathering their meaning, and then she felt herself growing giddy and faint, for she was still very weak from recent illness, and she hastily dropped the letter into the desk and shut down the lid, only just before a film came over her eyes, a m.u.f.fled sound in her ears, and oblivion over her senses. This is the swoon in which she was found by Mrs. Rockharrt, and for which she could give no satisfactory reason.

When Cora recovered from that swoon her first care, on the first opportunity, was to go to her writing desk to look for her precious letter--Rothsay's last letter to her. No one had opened her desk or disturbed its contents.