"This is a pretty march you have stolen on us, Cora! I had no more idea of this than the man in the moon! But I congratulate you, my dear! I congratulate you! Your present from me shall be a set of the most splendid diamonds that can be got together by the diamond merchants of Europe. No mere set that can be picked up ready set, eh? Diamonds that shall grace a d.u.c.h.ess, my dear!" said Mr. Fabian ostentatiously.

"Cora, my dear, I was as much surprised as Fabian. But, oh! I was happy for your sake. The duke is a good fellow, I am sure, and awfully in love with you. Ah! didn't he offer a just and heartfelt tribute to the father! I declare, Cora, I never fully appreciated my father, or realized what a great benefactor he was to the human race, until the duke made that little speech in proposing his health. How appreciative the duke is! Really, Cora, dear, you are a very happy woman, and I congratulate you with all my heart and soul; indeed, I do," said Mr.

Clarence, wringing the young lady's hand, and turning away to hide the tears that filled his eyes.

"Thank you, Uncle Clarence. Thank you, Uncle Fabian. I am grateful for your congratulations, on account of your good intentions; but--congratulations are quite uncalled for on this occasion."

"Why--what on earth do you mean, Cora?" inquired Mr. Fabian, while Mr.

Clarence looked full of uneasiness.

"I mean that I have never been engaged to the Duke of c.u.mbervale, and never mean to marry him. Mr. Rockharrt's announcement was unauthorized and unfounded. It was just an act of his despotic will, to oblige me to contract a marriage which he favors."

The two men looked on the speaker in mute amazement.

"We will not talk more of this to-night. But the matter must be set right to-morrow," said Cora.

A little later Mr. and Mrs. Fabian Rockharrt took leave and departed for their home.

CHAPTER XXVII.

UNREQUITED LOVE.

The Duke of c.u.mbervale, weary of a sleepless pillow, arose early and rang his bell, startling his gentlemanly valet from his morning slumbers; dressed himself with monsieur's a.s.sistance, and went down stairs with the intention of taking a walk before the family should be up.

But his intention was forestalled by the appearance of Mr. Rockharrt coming out of his chamber on the opposite side of the hall.

The Iron King looked up in some surprise at the apparition of his guest at so early an hour; but quickly composed himself as he gave him the matutinal salutation:

"Ah, good morning, duke. An early riser, like myself, eh? Come down into the library with me, and let us look over the morning papers."

A cheerful coal fire was burning in the grate, a very acceptable comfort on this chill November morning.

This was one of the happy days when there is "nothing in the papers"--that is to say, nothing interesting, absorbing, soul harrowing, in the form of financial ruin, highway robbery, murder, arson, fire, or flood. Everything in the world at the present brief hour seemed going on well, consequently the papers were very dull, flat, stale and unprofitable, and were soon laid aside by the host and his guest, and they fell into conversation.

"You took a long walk yesterday, I hear--went across in the ferry boat, and strolled up to the foot of Scythia's Roost."

"I did. Can you tell me anything about that curious spot?"

"No; nothing but that it was the dwelling of an Indian woman, who pretended to second sight, and who should have been sent to the State's prison as a felon, or, at the very least, to the madhouse as a lunatic.

She was burned out, or perhaps burned herself out, and vanished on the same night that Governor Rothsay disappeared. She was in some way cognizant of a plot against him that would prevent him from ever entering upon the duties of his office. I, in my capacity as magistrate, issued a warrant for her arrest, but it was too late. She was gone. It is said by some people that she is a Mexican Indian, who had been very beautiful in her youth, and who had become infatuated with an English tourist who admired her to such a degree that he married her--according to the rites of her nation. He was a false hearted caitiff, if he was an English lord. Having committed the folly of marrying the Indian woman, he should have been true to her--made the best of the bad bargain.

Instead of which he grew tired of her, and finally abandoned her."

"Did he return to his native country, do you know?"

"He did not. She never gave him time. She went mad after he left her, followed him to New Orleans and tomahawked him on the steamboat. She was tried for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and sent to a lunatic asylum. After a time she was discharged, or she escaped. It is not known which; most probably she escaped, as she certainly was not cured. She was as mad as a March hare all the time she lived here; but as she was harmless--comparatively harmless--it seemed n.o.body's business to have her shut up! And as I said, when at last I thought it was time to have her arrested on a charge of vagrancy, it was too late. She had fled."

"Why do you suspect that she had some knowledge of a plot to make away with the governor-elect?"

"I suspect that she was in the plot. Developments have led me to the conclusion. By these I learned that Rothsay was not murdered, as his friends feared, nor abducted, as some persons believed, but that he went away, and lived for many months among the Indians in the wilderness, without giving a sign of his ident.i.ty to the people among whom he lived, or sending a hint of his whereabouts, or even of his existence, to his anxious friends. But that the ma.s.sacre of Terrepeur--in which he was murdered and his hut was burned--occurred when it did, we might never have learned his fate."

"Yet, still, I cannot see the ground upon which you suspect this Indian woman of complicity in the man's disappearance," said c.u.mbervale.

"But I am coming to that. Scythia was a Mexican Indian. It is well known to travelers that the Mexican Indians possess the secret of a drug which, when administered to a man, will not kill him, or do him any physical harm, but will reduce him to a state of abject imbecility, so that his free will is destroyed, and he may be led by any one who may wish to lead him. This drug administered to Rothsay, by the woman, must have so deprived him of his reason as to induce him to follow any one influencing him."

"What interest could she have had in reducing the man to this state of dementia?"

"She had been like a mother to the young man, and had sheltered him in her hut for years, when he had no other home. She was very much attached to this adopted son of hers; she was longing to go back to her tribe and die among her own people. It may be that she wished to take him with her, and so gave him the drug that destroyed his will. Or, she may have been the tool of others. All this is the merest conjecture. But the facts remain that she foretold his fate, and that she vanished on the same day on which he disappeared, and that he remained in exile, voluntarily, until he was murdered by the Indians. Still--there might have been another cause for this self-expatriation."

"May I inquire its nature?"

"No, duke; it is only in my secret thought. I have no just right to speak of it to you. But if the question be not indiscreet, will you tell me why you take so deep an interest in the unreliable story of this Indian woman's life?"

"Certainly; because the wild young blade who married and left her, and paid down his life for that desertion, was my own uncle, my father's elder brother, Earl Netherby, the heir to the dukedom, by whose death my father, and subsequently myself, succeeded to the t.i.tle."

"You astonish me! Are you sure of this?"

"Reasonably sure. I was but five years old when my uncle came to bid us good-by, before setting out for America. But I remember his having on his finger a wonderful ring, a large solitaire diamond with certain flaws in it; but these flaws were very curious; they were faint traces left by the hand of nature shaping out a human eye. When ordinary mortals like myself looked at the diamond, they saw the delicate outline of an eye traced by the flaws in the stone; but it was said that whenever a clairvoyant looked into it they could see, not the human eye, but, as through a telescope, they could view the panorama of future events."

"What nonsense!" said Mr. Rockharrt.

"Nonsense, of course," a.s.sented the duke. "I did not speak of the ring on account of its supposed magic power, but because it was so peculiar a jewel that it would be impossible to mistake it for any other ring, or any other ring for itself; and to lead up to the statement that its discovery enabled me to identify the Mexican Indian woman with the maniac who murdered my uncle, as you will see very soon. When my uncle took leave of us, my father, noticing the family talisman--which, by the way, was picked up by our ancestor, Raoul-de-Netherbie, the great Crusader, on the battle field of Acre, and was said to have belonged to an Eastern magician, and has remained an heirloom with the head of our family ever since--inquired of his brother whether he was going to wear that outre jewel in open view upon his finger. My uncle answered that he was; and half laughing, and wholly incredulous, he added:

"'You know, Hugh, that this stone is a talisman against shipwreck, fires, floods, robbery, murder, illness, and all the perils by land or by sea, and all the ills that flesh is heir to. While I wear this ring I expect to be safe from the evils of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

So it shall never leave my living hand while I am away; but it shall bring me home safe to live to a patriarchal age and then die peacefully in my bed, with my children and children's children of many generations weeping and wailing around me.'

"These or words to this effect he was speaking, while I, standing by the chair in which he sat, toyed with his hand, and gazed curiously upon the talismanic jewel, and got into my mind an impression of it that never was lost. My uncle soon after left the house, and we never saw him alive again."

"He was the victim of this mad woman?"

"I know it. News was slow in those days. We seldom heard from my uncle.

His letters were but the mark of the cities he stopped at. We had one letter from Boston; a month later one from New York; a fortnight later, perhaps--for I only remember these matters by hearing them talked over by my parents--from Philadelphia; later still, and later, Baltimore, Washington, Nashville, New Orleans, and so on as he journeyed southward.

Then came a long interval, during which we heard nothing from him, while all his family suffered the deepest anxiety, fearing that he had fallen a victim to the terrible fever that was then desolating the Crescent City. Then at length came a letter from his valet--a deep black-bordered letter--which announced the terrible news of the murder of his master by a Mexican Indian woman, supposed to be mad. There were no details, but only the explanation that he, the valet--who had seen the murder, which was the work of an instant--was detained in New Orleans as a witness for the prosecution, and should not be able to return home until after the trial. It was two months after the latter that the valet came back to England in charge of his late master's effects, which had all been sealed by the New Orleans authorities, and reached us intact. Only the family talisman was missing, and could nowhere be found. And as the family's prosperity, and even continuity, was supposed to depend upon the possession of that ring, its loss was considered only a less misfortune than my uncle's death. Later, my uncle's remains were brought home from New Orleans and deposited in the family vault at c.u.mbervale Castle.

"The ring was never again heard of. On the death of my grandfather, the seventh duke, my father, who was the second son, succeeded to the t.i.tle.

But fortune seemed to have deserted us. By a series of unlucky land speculations my father lost nearly all his riches, which calamities preyed upon his mind so that his health broke down and he sank into premature old age and died. I came into the t.i.tle with but little to support it. So that when I honestly loved a lady believed to be wealthy, my motives were supposed to be mercenary."

The Iron King might have felt this thrust, but he gave no sign. The duke continued:

"My after life does not concern the story of the ring. On learning, since my return from long travel in the East, that your fair granddaughter was widowed nearly two years before, you know I wrote to you asking her address, with a view of renewing my old suit. You replied by telling me that Mrs. Rothsay made her home with you, and inviting me to visit you. I refer to this only to keep the sequence of events in order. I came. Yesterday morning I went to Scythia's Roost, climbed from that shelf to the top of the mountain and viewed the scene from it.

After I came down again to Scythia's Roost I sat down to rest. The sun was sinking behind the ridge, but through a crevice in the rocks a ray--'a line of golden light'--pierced and seemed to strike fire and bring out an answering ray from some living light left in the ashes. I went to see what it was, and picked up the magic ring, the family talisman. There it was, the wonderful stone for which no other could possibly be mistaken, the gem of intolerable light and fire that had to be shaded before it could be steadily looked at and before the delicate lines of its flaws delineating the human eye could be discerned. Here is the ring, Mr. Rockharrt. Examine it for yourself."

Mr. Rockharrt took the ring, examined it curiously, turned it toward the clouded window, then toward the blazing sea coal fire; in both positions it burned and sparkled just like any other diamond. Then he shaded it and looked at it through his eye-gla.s.ses; finally he shook his head and returned it to its owner, saying:

"It is a fine gem, barring a flaw, and I congratulate you on its recovery, but I see no human eye in it. I see some indistinct lines, fine as the thread of a spider's web, that is all. There is the breakfast bell, duke. We will go into the drawing room and find Cora.

She must be down by this time."