Mr. Howard held out his hand, and Colonel Yancey grasped it.
"The human heart is a curious thing, Mr. Howard. I was as determined five minutes ago as ever a man was on earth to let you plead until you lost your breath, yet I would never part with my hold on Miss Carolina through owning Guildford. Now, in the twinkling of an eye, I am ready to let you have it. I can’t give it to you quickly enough. What price are you willing to pay?"
"Suppose we say the face of the mortgage,--just what it cost you?"
"Ten thousand dollars less, if you say so, Mr. Howard."
"No, I prefer to let you show your gratitude to her in some other way. I will pay what you paid."
"Good! I will have the deed made out to-day. But lose no time in telling her that Guildford is hers. She has won it for herself."
"If I tell her that, do you know what she will say?" asked Mr. Howard.
"She will give all the credit to her new thought. She told me before I started that I would be successful. As she puts it, ’Nothing is ever lost in Truth.’"
"Then she considers, even though Guildford has been in my power for several years, that it was never really lost to her?"
"In her new conception of the truth, that is the way she argues."
"By Jove, Mr. Howard, I’m going to join them! I wonder if she would let me go to church with her next Sunday?"
But, as he turned away, Mr. Howard shook his head and said to himself: "Carolina will have to tell him what she told Noel,--of the futility of attempting to be a Scientist for the sake of the loaves and fishes."
But, indeed, Carolina had not only believed it, but, with her Bible and "Science and Health" on her knees, during the hour of the interview she had made her demonstration, so that she knew it without words. She felt it by the uplift in her own heart and the nearness of her own soul to the Infinite, so that, when Mr. Howard appeared with a beaming face to tell her, the radiance on Carolina’s admonished him that she knew already.
"But you don’t know all, young lady! After I had left his office, the colonel came post-haste after me to say that his sister and the children are to leave to-morrow for Whitehall, his brother-in-law’s estate, which lies some twelve miles from Guildford, but northeast from Enterprise, the little station, where you leave the railroad, and Miss Yancey is going to call on you and Mrs. Winchester this evening, to invite you to make Whitehall your headquarters until you can establish yourself elsewhere."