The boy’s eagle glance flew from one convulsed face to another. Then he showed his blood. He came to Carolina’s side, and put his arms around her neck and kissed her cheek, whispering:
"I’ll never speak of it again. They can laugh if they want to, but some day you’ll remember that I behaved when you asked me to."
He went back to his seat and Carolina looked at Emmeline, and both little ladies rose from the heads of their tables and led the way to the drawing-room.
But Carolina was uneasy. She could not forget the look that Moultrie La Grange shot at her, when Bob said, "After you have once loved a girl like Carolina, how would you like to be told to take up with anybody else?"
She knew the time was approaching when he would ask his question over again, and she was not prepared yet to give an answer. She was sure he was on the right track, but she was not sure that he would persevere.
The chill of autumn always manifests itself in November days in South Carolina after the sun goes down, and when the guests repaired to the library, they found a great log fire, the size of which they had never seen before. For weeks Carolina’s servants had scoured the woods for a backlog of sufficient girth to please their mistress, but it was ’Polyte who finally secured the prize.
Around this glorious fire they all gathered, and something of the way Guilford had been restored, as well as the gentle tranquillity of the twilight hour, crept into their hearts and tinged the conversation with an intimacy which years of ordinary social intercourse could not have accomplished. Christian Scientists all over the world will recognize this as a fact peculiar to themselves. If church-member meets church-member of any other denomination, they are forced to become acquainted as is usual in society, because there is no unanimity of thought, and each is bound for his or her particular goal by independent and widely diverse routes. But in Christian Science instantaneous intimacies are possible, because it is the one religion which requires comparative unanimity of thought, and all are travelling in the identical path which leads to the ultimate perfection of harmony.
Thus, with no other light than the firelight and with no further introduction to the dear people of the Southland, than that they were either Christian Scientists or Carolina’s beloved kinfolk, no one was surprised when Doctor Colfax said: