Front matter (continued 3)

"Now, Mr. Howard," he said, "in broaching the subject of the purchase of Guildford, may I ask whom you are representing?"

"Why should you imagine that I am representing any one?" inquired Mr. Howard. "Why not imagine that I want Guildford for my own use? It is a good property. It has a water-front. It is picturesque. Why not suppose that I merely want to acquire a winter home in South Carolina?"

"Then why not look at property just as good, nearer to the town of Enterprise than Guildford lies, and with a good stone house already on it? For instance, my sister's late husband's place, Whitehall, is for sale."

"Thank you for mentioning it," said Mr. Howard, "but I especially want Guildford."

"Then--pardon me for saying so--you must have some ulterior motive for wanting it, for the place is worth no more than the adjoining property of Sunnymede or half a dozen other contiguous estates."

"That is exactly the thought which came to me, if you will pardon me for mentioning it, when I heard that you had bought and foreclosed the mortgage on Guildford!"

Mr. Howard laid his finger-tips together, with a quiet satisfaction in thus having trapped his antagonist. But he little knew Wayne Yancey.

With an assumption of honesty, which fairly took the Northern man's breath away, Colonel Yancey looked first out of the window, as if to consider, and then said:

"You are right, Mr. Howard, and to a man of honour like yourself, I will tell you the real reason why I bought the mortgage on Guildford, why I foreclosed it in order to own the place, and why I hope you will drop the idea of purchasing it, for I tell you frankly at the outset that, if you press the matter, I shall simply put a prohibitive price upon the property, and you have no legal recourse by which you can compel me to part with it. Please bear this in mind. And for explanation of this unalterable decision--here it is. I love Carolina Lee. I told her father so when she was only a girl of sixteen in London. He gave me his blessing, and told me he would rather leave her to me than to any other man in the world. He was my dearest friend. I was the unhappy means of bringing a loss on Sherman, which it shall be my life-work to make good. If Winchester Lee can hear me in the place where he has gone, he knows that I mean well by both of his children. I adore Carolina, but she has refused to marry me, and, knowing her love for her old home, I obtained possession of it in order to restore it to her. If you do not believe that I mean this, ask her if I did not offer her Guildford as a free gift."

"You are a clever man, Colonel Yancey, and you knew then, as well as you know now, that to offer a girl of Carolina's spirit a valuable gift like that was to insult the Lee pride. What did you hope to gain by it?"

"The girl herself! I confess it without shame, sir. I would move heaven and earth in order to have that girl for my wife! You do not know Wayne Yancey, Mr. Howard, or you would know that that means more than appears on the surface."

"I may not know you completely, Colonel Yancey, but I know you well enough to believe that part of your statement implicitly. But you will never win her either by force or by coercion of any kind. Give her a free hand and let her come to you of her own accord, or she will not come at all."

By the expression which flitted across the colonel's slightly cruel face at Mr. Howard's words, he was convinced of one thing, and that was that the man was honestly and deeply in love with Carolina. This fact illuminated the matter somewhat.

"It would be quite true with horses," mused Colonel Yancey. "And a blooded horse and a spirited woman have many points in common."

"I freely confess to you that I wish to purchase Guildford in order to let Carolina go down there and work her will with the place. The girl has courage, good business ideas; she is a friend of my daughter's, and I am interested in the development of her character. I would just as soon leave you to make the same arrangement with her which I propose to make, if she would consent to have money transactions with you, but she will not. For what reason you and she probably know. I confess that I do not, but what you have just been good enough to tell me concerning your feelings toward her would seem to throw light upon the situation. Now, may I make a suggestion?"

"A thousand, if you will!"

"Thank you. Now, possibly an outsider may be able to give you a new point of view. Suppose you yield to Carolina's wishes, sell me the place, and thus give her the opportunity to carry out her dead father's plans. You thus provide her with a cherished life-work. You know the Lees. They are proud and grateful. To whom would her heart naturally turn? To an old married man like me, through her friendship for my daughter, or to a comparatively young man like yourself, in whose children she is as vitally interested as she must have been to heal your baby girl?"

Now Mr. Howard was deliberately playing upon the man's feelings, but he was not prepared for the change in Colonel Yancey's face.

"Did she do that?" he said, in a hoarse voice, "Did she do it?"

"Certainly she did. Who else?"

"They told me that Mrs. Goddard did it--Sister Sue told me."

"No, it is considered by the Christian Scientists--this new sect which you may have heard that Carolina has joined--that Gladys is her first case of healing. Carolina is Mrs. Goddard's pupil, and doubtless Mrs. Goddard helped her,--in the curious way they have, for I overheard Carolina telephoning Mrs. Goddard to treat her--Carolina--for fear, in your little daughter's case. I believe they heal by confidence in God's promises and the theory that mind controls matter. Wonderful, isn't it?"

"Wonderful, indeed, but the most wonderful part of it to me is that Miss Carolina was induced to render me this inestimable benefit when she--well, she used to hate me, to be quite frank. If you knew the rebuffs I have taken at her hands!"

"Well, that is one of the results of this new religion of hers. It is founded on love, and they are obliged to live it, or they fail to receive any benefits. It is a self-acting religion, and is its own detective. They regard hatred, for example, as a disease, and naturally Carolina could not, in their code, be healed herself or heal others as long as she hated you. Thus, in healing your little girl, she was working out her own salvation."

"Mr. Howard," said Colonel Yancey, with his face working painfully, "you don't know what it is to have a crippled child. You don't know the agony I have endured, looking at her beautifully formed little body and into her dear face, with its intelligent eyes, broad brow, and sweet mouth, and then realizing that all her life she must be helpless, unable to walk or even to stand, a burden to herself and others. Her feet, as perhaps you know, were perfect in shape and form. They were simply turned inward. I have gone through Gethsemane itself wondering when her tender little heart would learn its first taste of bitterness against the parents who brought her into the world to suffer so. And then to have all this load of grief lifted, to see my baby walk about and play with her little sister, and frolic as other children do, and suddenly to learn that I owe it to the woman who is my all in life--I assure you, sir, it is almost more than my heart can bear. Take Guildford on your own terms, sir! It is a small return!"

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.

"No, what?"

"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?"

"I'm sure she would."

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."

"Oh, how kind of them!" said Carolina.

"Then y-you will accept?" demanded Kate, in old-thought surprise.

"Why, what could possibly be better?" asked Carolina, in new-thought simplicity and gratitude.

"T-ten to one on Colonel Yancey!" murmured Kate in her father's ear as they turned away.

"W-was it a d-difficult job, d-daddy?" she asked, tucking her arm into his.

"Kate, child, it was an absolute triumph for Carolina's new religion. I deserve no credit. The man set his jaws and looked as hard as nails, until I mentioned that Carolina had healed his baby. He had been carefully led--probably by Carolina's instructions--to believe that Mrs. Goddard did it--"

"Y-yes, Miss Yancey believes it, too."

"Well, they forgot to coach me, so I told him it was Carolina. My dear, voilà tout!"

"C-Christian Science p-plays ball every time, doesn't it?" observed Kate, thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XII.

WHITEHALL

"Well," said Mrs. Winchester, looking out of the car-window as the train approached Enterprise, "if any man had told me that two years from the day we left Bombay I should find myself going back to Guildford to live, I should have said he was a thousand dollars from the truth. What are you laughing at, Carolina?"

"And if any man had told me that I could ever have brought myself to accept an invitation from Miss Sue Yancey to visit them at Whitehall until we could establish ourselves comfortably, when I used to dislike her brother so much, I should have said the same," said Carolina, "but love works many miracles in the human heart."

Mrs. Winchester looked sharply at the young girl, but Carolina's expression was so innocent Cousin Lois decided that she was not referring to Colonel Yancey. Then, with one of her rare caresses, which Mrs. Winchester prized above gold, Carolina laid her hand on Mrs. Winchester's arm and said:

"And, dear Cousin Lois, no mother could have been sweeter and more unselfish about the loss of her money than you have been, or more self-sacrificing to come down here with me."

"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mrs. Winchester, colouring like a girl of eighteen. Her blush was still beautiful and was her only comfort, except her waist-line. "You know that I love to be where you are. In fact, Carolina, if you knew how I suffered, actually suffered, child, last winter in Boston, when I was separated from you, you would believe me when I say that I cannot live without you. I must be with you. You are all I have in the world,--and the money,--what is money good for except to buy things with? Haven't I everything I want?"

Carolina listened with a beating heart.

"Yet, you are even going to have the money back!" she said, with another pressure of Cousin Lois's hand.

"Yes, I really believe I am. That new religion of yours seems to be a sort of magic carpet, to take you anywhere you want to go and to get you everything you want to have."

"It brings perfect harmony into your life," said Carolina.

"Well, harmony is heaven!" said Mrs. Winchester, emphatically.

"Oh, what bliss to be coming home!" breathed Carolina, fervently. "I wonder if any shipwrecked sailor or prodigal son or homesick child ever yearned as cruelly for his father's house as I yearn for my first sight of Guildford!"

Mrs. Winchester turned, a little frightened at the passion in the girl's tone. She felt that Carolina was unconsciously preparing herself for a bitter disappointment.

"How dear those little darkies are!" she cried. "But, oh, did you see what that woman did? She knocked that little boy sprawling! She knocked that child down! Did you ever hear of such cruelty? Do you suppose she could possibly have been his own mother, Cousin Lois?"

"Sit down, Carolina, and don't get so excited. Of course she was his mother. That's the way coloured women do. It saves talking,--which seems to do no good. I've seen old Aunt 'Polyte, in your father's time at Guildford, come creeping around the corner of her cabin to see if her children were obeying her, and, if she found that they were not, I've seen her knock all ten of them down,--some fully six feet away. And such yells!"

"Did grandfather allow it?" demanded Carolina, with blazing eyes.

"I can fairly see him now, sitting his horse Splendour, draw rein and shake with silent laughter, till he had to take his pipe out of his mouth. It was too common a sight to make a fuss about. Besides, they needed it. Of all the mischievous, obstinate, thick-headed little donkeys you ever saw, commend me to a raft of black children,--Aunt 'Polyte's in particular. Coloured women are nearly always inhuman on the surface to their own children."

"Wasn't Aunt 'Polyte my father's black mammy? Wasn't she kind to the white children in her charge?"

"Ah, that was a different matter. Kind? 'Polyte would have let all her own children die to save your father one ache. I remember when her children got the measles, she locked them all in the cabin, and sent her sister to feed them at night, while she stayed in the big house and kept her white children from contagion. Fortunately, none of her own died, but, if they had, it wouldn't have changed her idea of her duty."

"What was there queer about Aunt 'Polyte? I remember that daddy told me once, but I have forgotten."

"She had one blue eye and one biack one, and not one of her children inherited her peculiarity except her youngest child,--a boy,--born when she was what would be called an old woman. I know she thought it was a bad omen to have a child after she was fifty, and, when she saw his blue eye, she said he was marked for bad luck."

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Carolina. "Cousin Lois, you know enough about Christian Science to know that she made a law for that child which may have ruined him for life."

"Yes, I suppose she did. But, Carolina, dear, don't get your hopes of the South up too high. I am afraid it won't come up to your expectations."

Carolina smiled, sighed, and shook her head.

"I can't modify my anticipations, Cousin Lois. Don't try to help me. If I am to be disillusioned, let it come with an awful bump. Nothing short of being knocked down with a broadside like that little negro boy can do my case any good. I'm hopeless."

"I believe you are. Well, we shall see. We must be nearly there. The last time the train stopped,--was it to shoo a cow off the track or to repair the telegraph wires?--the conductor said we were only five hours late. But that was six hours ago. I wonder what we are stopping at this little shed for? Oh, hurry, Carolina! He is calling Enterprise and beckoning to us."

"No hurry, ma'am," said the conductor. "The train will wait until you all get off in comfort, or I'll shoot the engineer with my own hand!"

Carolina stepped from the train to the platform and looked around. Then she bit her lip until it bled. Cousin Lois was counting the hand-luggage and purposely refrained from looking at her.

There was a platform baking in the torrid heat of a September afternoon. From a shed at one end came the clicking of a telegraph instrument. That, then, must be the station. Six or eight negro boys and men, who had been asleep in the shade of a dusty palmetto, roused up at the arrival of the train and came lazily forward to see what was going on. There were some dogs who did not take even that amount of trouble. A wide street with six inches of dust led straight away from the station platform. There was a blacksmith shop on one side and a row of huts on the other. Farther along, Carolina could see the word "Hotel" in front of a one-story cottage. The town fairly quivered with the heat.

"Was you-all expectin' any one to meet you?" inquired the conductor.

"Why, yes," answered Mrs. Winchester. "Miss Yancey said she would send for us."

"Miss Yancey? Miss Sue or Miss Sallie Yancey? Fat lady with snappin' brown eyes?"

"Yes, that describes her."

"The one that's just been to New York with the colonel's children?"

"Yes."

"Oh, well, that's Miss Sue. She'll send all right, but likely's not you've got to wait awn her. She's so fat she can't move fast. Have you ever heard how the colonel's little girl was kyored? She went to one of these here spiritualists and was kyored in a trance, they tell me."

"Ah, is that what they say?" said Mrs. Winchester, in a tone of deep vexation. She felt insulted to think of so dignified a belief as Christian Science being confounded with such a thing as spiritualism. But she realized the absurdity of entering into a defence of a new religion with the conductor of a waiting train. She had, however, forgotten what Southern railroads are like.

"Yes'm. They say a lady done it. Jest waved her hands over the child, and Gladys hopped up and began to shout and sing and pray!"

"My good man," said Mrs. Winchester, "do start your train up. You are seven hours late as it is!"

"What's your hurry, ma'am? Everybody expects this train to be late. I can't go till my wife's niece comes along. She wants to go on this train, and I reckon I know better than to leave her. She's got a tongue sharper'n Miss Sue Yancey's."

Mrs. Winchester turned her majestic bulk on the conductor, intending to annihilate him with a glance, but he shifted his quid of tobacco to the other cheek, spat neatly at a passing dog, lifted one foot to a resting-place on Carolina's steamer-trunk, and continued, pleasantly:

"Now, that there dust comin' up the road means business for these parts. I'd be willin' to bet a pretty that that is either Moultrie La Grange or Miss Sue Yancey. But whoever it is, they are sho in a hurry."

Carolina stood looking at the cloud of dust also. Most of the passengers on the waiting train, with their heads out of the car-windows, were doing the same. It seemed to be the only energetic and disturbing element in an otherwise peaceful landscape, and only one or two passengers, who were obviously from the North and therefore impatient by inheritance, objected in the least to this enforced period of rest.

"And from here, I'd as soon say it was Moultrie as Miss Sue. They both kick up a heap of dust in one way or another, on'y Moultrie, he don't raise no dust talking. If it is Moultrie, he'll be mighty sore at bein' away when the train come in, on'y I reckon he didn't look for her so soon. We was thirteen hours late yestiddy."

How much longer the train would have waited, no one with safety can say, had not the cloud of dust resolved itself into a two-seated vehicle, in which sat two ladies, both clad in gray linen dusters, which completely concealed their identity. One of the dusters proved to be the conductor's niece, who took the time to be introduced to Mrs. Winchester and Carolina by the other duster, which turned out to be Miss Sue Yancey. When the conductor's niece had fully examined every item of Carolina's costume with a frank gaze of inventory, she stepped into the station to claim her luggage, and then, after bidding everybody good-bye all over again, she got into the train, put her head out of the window, called out messages to be given to each of her family, and, after a few moments more of monotonous bell-ringing by the engineer, in order to give everybody plenty of notice that the train was going to start, it creaked forward and bumped along on its deliberate journey farther south.

Carolina took an agonized notice of all this. If it had been anywhere else in the world, she could have been amused; she would have listened in delight to the garrulous conductor, and would have laughed at the crawling train. But here at Enterprise,--that dear town which was nearest to the old estate of Guildford,--why, it was like being asked to laugh at the drunken antics of a man whom you recognized as your own brother!

She listened to Miss Yancey's apologies for being late with a stiff smile on her lips. She must have answered direct questions, if any were asked, because no breaks in the conversation occurred and no one looked questioningly at her, but she had no recollection of anything except the jolting of the springless carriage and the clouds of dust which rolled in suffocating clouds from beneath the horses' shuffling feet.

They drove about four miles, and then turned in at what was once a gate. It was now two rotting pillars. The road was rough and overgrown on each side with underbrush. The house before which they stopped had been a fine old colonial mansion. Now the stone steps were so broken that Miss Yancey politely warned her guests with a gay:

"And do don't break your neck on those old stones, Mrs. Winchester. You see, we of the old South live in a continuous state of decay. But we don't mind it now. We have gotten used to it. If you will believe me, it didn't even make me jealous to see the prosperity of those Yankees up North. I kept saying to myself all the time, 'But we have got the blood!'"

As they entered the massive hall, cool and dim, the first thing which struck the eye was a large family tree, framed in black walnut, hanging on one side of the wall, while on the other was a highly coloured coat of arms of the Yanceys, also framed and under glass.

Miss Yancey took off her duster and hung it on the hat-rack.

"Now, welcome to Whitehall! Will you come into the parlour and rest awhile, or would you like to go to your rooms and lie down before supper? I want you to feel perfectly at home, and do just as you please."

"I think we will go to our rooms, please," said Mrs. Winchester, with one glance into Carolina's pale, tired face.

"Here, you Jake! Carry those satchels to Mrs. Winchester's room, and, Lily, take these things and go help the ladies. And mind you let me know if they want anything."

A few moments afterward, Lily, the negro maid, came hurrying down-stairs, her eyes rolling.

"Laws, Miss Sue! Dey wants a bath! Dey axed me where wuz de bathroom, en I sez, 'Ev'ry room is a bathroom while y'all is takin' a bath in it.' En Miss Sue, Miss Calline, she busted right out laffin'."

"They want a bath?" cried Miss Sue. "Well, go tell Angeline to heat some water quick, and you fill this pitcher and take it up to them. But mind that you wash it out first,--if you don't, you'll hear from me,--and don't be all day about it. Now, see if you can hurry, Lily."

When the sun went down, the oppressive quality in the heat seemed to disappear, and when Cousin Lois and Carolina came down in their cool, thin dresses, they found themselves in the midst of the most delightful part of a Southern summer day.

Miss Sue was nowhere to be seen, but another lady, as thin as she was fat, came out of the dimness and introduced herself.

"I am Mrs. Elliott Pringle, ladies, though you will nearly always hear me called Miss Sallie Yancey. Sister Sue is out in the garden. Shall we join her? I know she wants you to see her roses."

Carolina's spirits began to rise. She felt ashamed of her hasty disillusionment. Where was her courage that she should be depressed by clouds of dust and the lack of a bathroom?

In the early evening, with the shadows lengthening on the grass and the pitiless sun departed, the ruin everywhere apparent seemed only picturesque, while the warm, sweet odours from the garden were such as no Northern garden yields.

There were narrow paths bordered with dusty dwarf-box, with queer-shaped flower-beds bearing four-o'clocks, touch-me-nots, phlox, azaleas, and sweet-william. Then there were beds upon beds of a flower no Northerner ever sees,--the old-fashioned pink, before gardeners, wiser than their Maker, attempted to graft it. In its heavy, double beauty it always bursts its calyx and falls of its own weight of fragrance, to lie prostrate on the ground, dying of its own heavy sweetness. Against a crumbling wall were tea-roses. In another spot grew a great pink cabbage rose, as flat as a plate when in full bloom, with its inner leaves still so tightly crinkled that its golden heart was never revealed except by a child's curious investigating fingers. And curiously twisting in and out of the branches of this rose-tree was a honeysuckle vine. Over one end of the porch climbed a purple clematis. Over the other a Cherokee rose. But the great glory of the garden was over against the southern wall, where roses of every sort bloomed in riotous profusion. Evidently they bloomed of their own sweet will, and with little care, for the garden was almost as neglected as the rest of the place.

Still it was the first thing which brought back to Carolina "a memory of something" she "never had seen," as she told Cousin Lois when she went in, and she made an excuse to go out alone after supper was over and the three ladies were comfortably seated in rocking-chairs on the front porch.

"Don't sit in that chair, Mrs. Winchester," Carolina heard Miss Sallie's voice say, as she ran down the steps into the garden. "That chair has no seat to it, and the back is broken to this one. Sit in this chair. I think it won't be too damp here to wait for Moultrie."

The girl could smile now, for the witchery of the evening was on the garden, and its perfume enthralled her senses. She walked until she got beyond the sound of voices on the front porch, and, at the head of a set of shallow terraces, set like grassy steps to lead down to the brook which babbled through the lower meadow, she sat down to let her mind take in the sudden change in her life.

She rested her chin on her hands and was quite unaware that, in her thin blue dress, with frills of yellow lace falling away from the arms above the elbows, and with her neck rising from the transparent stuff like an iris on its slender stem, she made anything of a picture, until she became aware that some one was standing quite still on a lower terrace and looking at her with so fixed an expression that she turned until her eyes met his. Most girls would have started with surprise, but to Carolina it was no surprise at all to find the stranger of the Metropolitan Opera and the stranger who had borrowed her brother's dog-cart, a part of the enchanted garden, and to feel in her own heart that he was no stranger to her, nor ever had been, nor ever could be.

They looked at each other for a few moments, the man and the woman, and the sound of the brook came faintly to their ears. But the scent of the garden was all about them and there was no need of speech.

Slowly Carolina smiled, and he reached up his hand to hers and took it and said:

"You know me?" and she said:

"Yes."

"And I know you," he said, "for I have felt ever since that first night that you would come."

"That first night?" she breathed.

"At the opera," he said.

Then he drew back strangely and looked around at the garden and frowned, as if it had been to blame for the words he had spoken when he had not meant to speak. But, although Carolina saw the look and the frown, she only smiled and breathed a great sigh of content and looked at the garden happily.

Then he turned to her again and said:

"Did you know that you and I are related?" And he saw with a great lift of the heart that she turned pale before answering, so to spare her he went on, hurriedly:

"I have been talking to Mrs. Winchester, and we find that the La Granges and Lees are kin. You and I are about twelfth cousins, according to Miss Sallie Yancey."

"So we are of the same blood," said Carolina, gently. Then she added: "I am glad."

"And so am I,--more glad than I can say, for it will give me the opportunity to be of service to you--in a way I could not--perhaps--if we were not kin."

Carolina looked at him inquiringly, but he had turned his head away, and again a frown wrinkled his smooth, brown forehead. Carolina looked at him eagerly. He was a man to fill any woman's eye,--tall, lean, lithe, and commanding, with long brown fingers which were closed nervously upon the brim of his soft black hat. His nose was straight, his lips sensitive yet strong, and his eyes had a way of making most women sigh without ever knowing why. Moultrie La Grange was said to have "a way with him" which men never understood, but which women knew, and knew to their sorrow, for everywhere it was whispered that "Moultrie would never marry, since--" and here the whispers became nods and half-uttered words and mysterious signs which South Carolinians understood, but which mystified Mrs. Winchester, and Carolina did not happen to hear the subject discussed.

"You have come down here," said Moultrie, "to restore Guildford."

"Yes," said Carolina, seeing that he paused for a reply.

"I wish that I could restore Sunnymede. Our place joins yours."

"It does?" cried Carolina. "Then why don't you?"

He looked at her sharply. Was she making fun of him?

"You are a rich young lady. I am a poor man. Can I rebuild Sunnymede with these?" He held out two fine, strong, symmetrical hands.

Carolina looked at them appreciatively before she answered.

"I am a poor young woman, but I intend to rebuild Guildford with, these!" And she held out beside his two of the prettiest hands and wrists and arms that Moultrie La Grange had ever seen in his life, and he at once said so. And Carolina, instead of being bored, as was her wont in other days, was so frankly pleased that she blushed, and said to herself that the reason she believed this man meant what he said was because she was poor, and he could not possibly be paying court to a wealth that she had lost. But the truth of the matter was that she believed him because she wanted to. It gave her an exquisite and unknown pleasure to have this man tell her over and over, as he did, that her hands were the most beautiful he had ever seen, and Carolina looked at them in a childish wonder, and as if she had never seen them before. And it was not until she had laid them in her lap again, and they were partly hidden, that she could bring the conversation back to anything like reason.

"How do you mean?" he questioned. "You can't do a thing without money. And I hear--" he stopped in confusion, and his forehead reddened.

"You know that we have lost ours," supplemented Carolina. "Well, you have heard correctly. Every dollar of my fortune is gone!" Her voice took on so triumphant a ring that Moultrie looked up at her in surprise. He did not know that part of her exultation came from the joy it gave her to be able to proclaim her poverty to this man out of all the world, and thus put herself on a level with him.

"I have only," she continued, "a little laid by which came from the sale of my jewels." Then, as she still saw the questions in his eyes which he forebore to ask, she added: "Do you want me to tell you about it all?"

"More than anything in the world," he assured her. And something in his tone shook the girl so that she paused a little before she began.

"Well, I suppose you know that when Sherman, my brother, mortgaged Guildford, Colonel Yancey bought the mortgage and foreclosed it. That is how he got possession of Guildford."

"But why?" interrupted the man. "What in the world did he especially want Guildford for, when there are a dozen other estates he could have bought for less money, and some of them with houses already built?"

"I don't know," said Carolina, so hurriedly that the man turned his eyes upon her, and, noticing the wave of colour mount to her brow under his gaze, he looked away and all at once he knew why. Carolina did not see his hands clench and his teeth come together with a snap, as he thought of the Colonel Yancey that men knew.

"But Mr. Howard, the father of my dearest friend, persuaded Colonel Yancey to sell it to him for the face value of the mortgage, so that now I have no fear of losing it, for Mr. Howard will give me all the time I want to pay for it."

"But what are you going to pay for it with?" asked the young man.

"Well, if you will go with us when we look over the estate, I can tell you better than I can now. Do you happen to know anything about this new process of making turpentine?"

"Of course I do," said La Grange, with a frown. "I suppose that your brother and his friends have organized a company with Northern capital to erect a plant which will make everybody rich. That's what all Northerners tell us when they want us to invest. Money is all Yankees seem to think about."

"My brother will have nothing to do with the affair at all!" said Carolina, with some heat. "Guildford is mine, and I'm going to make it pay for itself."

Moultrie said nothing, but his chin quivered with a desire to laugh, and Carolina saw it. Then he turned to her.

"You have never seen the home of your ancestors? How are you going to have your first view of it? From the Barnwells' carryall?"

Carolina's eyes dilated and she bit her lip.

"How else could I go?" she said, gently.

"If you would allow me," he said, eagerly, "we would go on horseback,--just you and I,--early, early in the morning. It would be the best time. Will you?"

"Oh, will you take me?" cried Carolina. There was only a look from Moultrie La Grange's eyes for an answer. But Carolina's flashed and wavered and dropped before it.

"Did you ever hear of a magnificent horse your grandfather owned, named Splendour?" he asked, quietly.

"Ah, yes, indeed."

"Well, I own a direct descendant of the sire of that very animal. Her name is Scintilla, and my friend, Barney Mazyck, owns Scintilla's full sister, a mare named Araby. I'll borrow her for you. Would you like that?"

"Oh, Mr. La Grange!" breathed Carolina.

"Please never call me that. Do let me claim kin with you sufficiently to have you call me 'Moultrie.'"

"And will you call me 'Carolina?'" she asked, shyly.

"We never do that down here with young ladies, unless we are own cousins. But I will call you 'Miss Carolina,' if I may."

"Then you are asking me to take more of a privilege than you will," said Carolina.

"I want you to take every privilege with me that you can permit yourself," he said, earnestly.

When Carolina went indoors that night, the first thing she did was to take two candlesticks, and, holding them at arm's length above her head, to study her own face in the great pier-glass which, in its carved mahogany frame, occupied one corner of her large bedchamber. Whatever the picture was which she saw reflected there, it seemed to give her pleasure, for she coloured and smiled as her eyes met those of the girl in the mirror.

"I am glad he thinks so!" she whispered to herself, as she turned away.

CHAPTER XIII.

GUILDFORD

Carolina never forgot that morning. She was up at four o'clock, and, by a previous arrangement with old Aunt Calla, the cook, she had a cup of coffee at dawn. Aunt Calla brought it into the dining-room herself.

"'Scuse me, honey, fer waiting awn you myself, but do you reckon I could 'a' got dat no 'count fool, Lily, to git up en wait awn ennybody at dis time in de mawnin'? Not ef she knowed huh soul gwine be saved by doin' it. Dese yere chillen ob mine is too fine to wuk lake dere mammy does."

"But how did you manage to wake up so early?" asked Carolina.

"Lawd, honey, I'se done nussed sick chillen tell I sleeps wid one eye open from habit. En when I see what a pretty day it gwine turn out, en when I see dat en de fust five minutes you laid eyes awn him, you done cotched de beau what half de young ladies in Souf Calliny done set dere caps for, I says to myself, 'Ole 'ooman, ef you wants to see courtin' as is courtin', you jes' hump doze ole rheumatiz laigs ob yours, en get dar 'fore dey suspicion it demselves!' Law, Mis' Calline, how you is blushing! Ump! ump!"

"Here, Aunt Calla, take this for your trouble, and go and see if Mr. La Grange has come," cried Carolina.

"Why, Mis' Calline, dis yere will buy me a new bunnet! Thank you, ma'am. Yas'm, dah he is! I kin tell de way Mist' Moultrie rides wid my eyes shut. He rides lake one ob dese yere centipedes!"

Old Calla made it a point to see the riders mount. The sun was just coming into view, sending the mists rolling upwards in silvery clouds, when Carolina stepped out of the door. Her habit was of a bluish violet, so dark that it was almost black. It matched the colour of her eyes. Her hair caught the tinge of the sun and held it in its shining meshes.

Moultrie La Grange was waiting for her at the foot of the steps.

He held the mare Araby by the bridle, and leaned on the saddle of his own mare, Scintilla, shielding his eyes.

"Good morning,--Moultrie."

"Is that you, Miss Carolina? The sun, or something blinds me."

Carolina had heard it all many times before. Why, then, this difference? She pretended to herself that she did not know, but she did know, and was happy in the knowing. He was so handsome! She gloried in his looks. She felt as she had felt when she stood before the Hermes of Praxiteles, and wondered, if such glorious beauty should ever come to life, how she could bear it!

Moultrie La Grange was not considered handsome by everybody. His beauty was too cold--too aloof--for the multitude to appreciate. But does the ordinary tourist go to Olympia?

Carolina had rather dreaded the four miles to Enterprise, if their way should lie over the dusty highway of yesterday. But she was not surprised; in fact, it seemed in keeping with what she had expected of him when he struck off through the woods, and she found herself, not only on the most perfect animal she had ever ridden, but in an enchanted forest.

Moultrie led the way both in conversation and in direction, and Carolina found herself glad to follow. His sarcasm, his wit, and the poetry of his nature were displayed without affectation. She kept looking at him eagerly, gladly, and yet expectantly. What was she waiting for? He discussed men but not deeds; amusements but not occupation; designs but not achievements. She wondered what he did with his time. He was strong, magnetic, gentle, charming. His voice was melodious. His manner full of the fineness of the old South.

Yet there was a vague lack in him somewhere. He just failed to come up to her ideal of what a man should be. Wherein lay this intangible lack?

Suddenly they emerged from the woods and struck the highway, and in another moment they were in Enterprise.

Not a breath of life was anywhere visible. Although it was six o'clock, not a wreath of smoke curled upward from any chimney. They rode through the sleeping town in silence.

"Now here," said Moultrie, "is a very remarkable town. It is, I may say, the only town in the world which is completely finished. Most towns grow, but not a nail has been driven in Enterprise, to my knowledge, since I was born. This town is perfectly satisfactory to its inhabitants just as it is!"

Against her will Carolina laughed. His tone was irresistible.

"Ought you to make fun of your own--your home town?" she asked.

"My more than that! Enterprise yields me my bread--sometimes."

Carolina looked at him. He pointed with his whip at the shed on the railroad platform.

"I am telegraph operator there six months in the year. I teach a country school in winter."

If he had struck her in the face with that same riding-whip, the red would not have flamed into Carolina's cheeks with more sudden fury. She dug her spurless heel into Araby's side, and the mare jumped with a swerve which would have unseated most riders. Moultrie looked at her in swift admiration, but she would not look at him. She struck her horse, and, with a mighty stride, Araby got the lead and kept it for a mile, even from Scintilla. Then the man overtook her and reached out and laid a hand on Carolina's bridle hand, and looked deep into her eyes and said:

"Why did you do that? Why did you try to escape from me? Don't you know that you never can?"

And all the time Carolina's heart was beating heavily against her side, and her brain was spinning out the question over and over, over and over:

"Oh, how can he? How can he be satisfied with that? How can he endure himself!"

It was not the lack of money, it was the lack of ambition in the man at her side, which stung her pride until it bled.

"Better go West on a cattle ranch," she thought, with bitter passion. "Better hunt wolves for the government. Better take the trail with the Indians than to lie down and rot in such a manner! And such a man!"

But suddenly a realization came to her of how marked her resentment would seem to him if he should discover its cause, and she hastened to play a part. But he was in no danger of discovering, because he did not even suspect. All the young fellows he knew, no matter how aristocratic their names, were at work for mere pittances at employments no self-respecting men would tolerate for a moment, because they offered no hope of betterment or promotion. Men with the talent to become lawyers, artists, bankers, and brokers were teaching school for less than Irish bricklayers get in large cities. Therefore, it could not be alleged that they were incapable of earning more or of occupying more dignified positions. It was simply the lack of ambition--the inertia of the South--which they could not shake off. It is the heritage of the Southern-born.

Presently Moultrie again pointed with his whip:

"Over yonder is Sunnymede, our place. Poor old Sunnymede! Mortgaged to its eyes, and with all its turpentine and timber gone! Guildford is intact. We just skirt the edge of Sunnymede riding to Guildford. And right where you see that tall blasted pine standing by itself is where I made one of my usual failures. I'm like the man with the ugly mule, who always backed. He said if he could only hitch that mule with his head to the wagon, he could get there. So, if my failures were only turned wrong side out, I'd be wealthy."

Carolina tried to smile. Moultrie continued:

"Once I thought I'd try to make some money, so I sold some timber to a Yankee firm who wanted fine cypress, and with the money I constructed a terrapin crawl. I knew how expensive terrapin are, and, if there is one thing I do know about, it is terrapin. So I canned a few prize-winners, and sent them to New York, and got word that they would take all I could send. Well, with that I began to feel like a Jay Gould. I could just see myself drinking champagne and going to the opera every night. So I immediately raised some mo' money in the same way,--out of the Yankees,--organized a small company, and built a canning factory. The lumber company was interested with me and advanced me all the money I wanted. So I got the thing well started, and left special word with the foreman, a cracker named Sharpe, to be sure and not can the claws, then I went off to New York to enjoy myself. I stayed until all my money was gone and then came home, intending to enjoy the wealth my foreman had built up in my absence. But what do you reckon that fool had done? Why, he had turned the work over to the niggers, and they had canned the terrapin just so,--claws, eyebrows, and all! Well, of course, the New York people went back on me,--wrote me the most impudent letters I ever got from anybody. It just showed me that Yankees can never hope to be considered gentlemen. Why, they acted as if I had cheated them! Said they had advertised largely on my samples, and had lost money and credit by my dishonest trickery. Just as if I were to blame! Then, of course, the Yankee lumbermen got mad, too, and foreclosed the mortgage and liquidated the company, and left me as poor as when I went in. I believe they even declare that I owe them money. Did you ever hear of such a piece of impudence?"

"Never," said Carolina, coolly, "if you mean on your part! You did everything that was wrong and nothing that was right. And the worst of it is that you are morally blind to your share of the blame."

"Why, Miss Carolina, what do you mean? I didn't go to lose their money. It hit me just as hard as it did them. I didn't make a cent."

"But the money that you lost wasn't yours to lose," cried Carolina, hotly.

"No, but I didn't do wrong intentionally. You can't blame a man for a mistake."

"There is such a thing as criminal negligence," said the girl, deliberately. "You had no business to trust an affair where your honour was pledged to an incompetent cracker foreman, and go to New York on the company's money, even if you did think you would earn the money to pay it back. How do you ever expect to pay it?"

"I don't expect to pay it at all, and I reckon those Yankees don't expect it, either."

"No, I don't suppose they do," said Carolina, bitterly.

"Well, if they are satisfied to lose it, and have forgotten all about it, would you bother to pay it back if you were in my place?"

"I would pay it back if I had to pay it out of my life insurance and be buried in a pine coffin in the potter's field! And as to those Northerners having forgotten it,--don't you believe it! They have simply laid it to what they call the to-be-expected dishonesty of the South when dealing with the North. The South calls it 'keeping their eyes peeled,' 'being wide-awake,' 'not being caught napping,' or catch phrases of that order. But the strictly honest business man calls it dishonest trickery, and mentally considers all Southerners inoculated with its poison. Do you know what Southern credit is worth in the North?"

Moultrie only looked sulky, but Carolina went on, spurred by her own despair and disillusionment.

"Well, you wouldn't be proud of it if you did! And just such a tolerant view of a thoroughly wrong transaction as you have thus divulged is responsible. Colonel Yancey was right. The South is heart-breaking!"

"Do you care so much?" asked Moultrie, softly.

Carolina lifted herself so proudly that the mare danced under her. She saw that she had gone too far. She also felt that error had mocked her. She had despaired of Moultrie's blind and false point of view when the Light of the world was at hand. Immediately her thought flew upwards.

But with Carolina absorbed in her work, and Moultrie puzzling over the sudden changes in her behaviour, it could not be said that the remainder of the ride was proving as pleasant as each had hoped. However, a perfect day, a fine animal, and the spirits of youth and enthusiasm are not to be ignored for long, and presently Carolina began to feel Guildford in the air. She looked inquiringly at Moultrie, and he answered briefly:

"In another mile." But there was a look in his eyes which made Carolina's heart beat, for it was the glance of comprehension which one soul flings to another in passing,--sometimes never to meet again, sometimes which leads to mating.

In another five minutes Moultrie raised his arm.

"There!"

Carolina reined in and Araby stood, tossing her slim head, raising her hoofs, champing her bit, and snuffing at the breeze which came to her red nostrils, laden with the breath of piny woods and balsam. Moultrie, sitting at parade rest on Scintilla and watching Carolina catch her breath almost with a sob, said to himself: "She feels just as that horse acts."

Carolina could find no words, nor did she dare trust herself. She was afraid she would break down. She lifted her gauntleted hand and the horses drew together and moved forward.

For more than a mile an avenue as wide as a boulevard led in a straight line, lined on each side by giant live-oaks. Ragged, unkempt shrubbery, the neglect of a lifetime, destroyed the perfectness of the avenue, but the majesty of those monarchs of trees could not be marred. The sun was only about an hour high, and the rays came slantingly across meadows whose very grasses spoke of fertility and richness. The glint of the river occasionally flashed across their vision, and between the bird-notes, in the absolute stillness, came the whispering of the distant tide.

At the end of the avenue lay the ruined stones of Guildford.

Carolina sprang down, flung her bridle-rein to Moultrie, and ran forward. She would not let him see her eyes. But she stumbled once, and by that he knew that she was crying. They were, however, tears of joy and thanksgiving. Guildford! Her foot was on its precious turf. These stones had once been her father's home. And she was free, young, strong, and empowered to build it up, a monument to the memory of her ancestors. Every word which Mrs. Goddard had prophesied had come true, and Carolina's first thought was a repetition of her words:

"See what Divine Love hath wrought!"

When she came back, instead of a tear-stained face, Moultrie saw one of such radiance that her beauty seemed dazzling. Where could be found such tints of colouring, such luminous depths in eyes, such tendrils of curling hair, such a flash of teeth, such vivid lips, and such a speaking smile? As he bent to receive her foot in his hand, he trembled through all his frame, and, as he felt her light spring to her mare's back, he would not have been at all surprised to discover that she had simply floated upward and vanished from his earthly sight to join her winged kindred. But, as she gathered up her reins and watched him mount, it was a very businesslike angel who spoke to him, and one whose brain, if the truth must be told, was full of turpentine.

"Now, let's explore," she said. "I have paid my respects to the shrine of my forefathers, now let's see what I have to sell my turpentine farmers."

"Your what?" asked the man, with the amused smile a man saves for the pretty woman who talks business.

"I am going to sell the orchard turpentine rights of Guildford to get money for building," she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"And I was thinking of you in a white robe playing a harp!" he said, with a groan.

"I often wear a white robe, and I play a harp quite commendably, considering that I have studied it since I was nine years old, but when I am working, I don't wear my wings. They get in my way."

Carolina by instinct rode to an elevation which commanded a view of the pine forests of Guildford.

"How much do I own?" she asked.

"As far as you can see in that direction. Over here your property runs into ours just where you see that broad gap."

"Why don't you rebuild Sunnymede?"

"No money!" he said, with a shrug.

"You have plenty of fallen timber and acres of stumpage to sell to the patent turpentine people."

"I don't know. I have never heard it discussed. We wouldn't sell to Yankees. We feel that we wouldn't have come to grief with the terrapin affair if we had been dealing with Southerners."

"Who are there to discuss? Who owns it with you?" asked Carolina, calmly ignoring the absurdity of his remarks.

"My brother and sister--" He paused abruptly, and then said: "You are sure to hear it from others, so I will tell you myself. The La Grange family skeleton shall be shown to you by no less a hand than my own! My brother has made a very--I hardly know what to call it. It is an unfortunate marriage, since no one knows who the girl is. When you saw me in New York, I was hoping to prevent their marriage, but it was too late. They had eloped and had been married immediately on arriving in New York. As soon as her aunt, with whom she lived, learned that Flower had eloped with my brother, she sent for me. She had been a great invalid, and the excitement had upset her so that when I arrived she looked as if she had not an hour to live. She caught me by the arm and said: 'Flower must not marry a La Grange. She is not my niece nor any relative of mine. Her mother was--' and with that her speech failed. She struggled as I never saw a being struggle to speak the one word more,--the one word needful,--and, failing, she fell back against her pillow--dead!"

Carolina's face showed her horror. He felt soothed by her understanding and went on, in a low, pained voice.

"It ruined my life. And it has ruined Winfield's."

"And the girl," said Carolina, in a tense voice, "Flower!"

"It has ruined hers. They are the most unhappy couple I ever saw. And more so since the baby came."

"It will all come right," declared Carolina, straightening herself. "You will discover that Flower is entitled to a name, and that your worst fears are incorrect."

"My worst fears--" began Moultrie. Then he stopped abruptly. "I cannot explain them to you," he said.

"I know what you mean. But remember that I, too, have seen Flower. I saw her that day, and I say to you that not one drop of negro blood flows in that girl's veins, and your brother's child is safe."

"You think so?" he exclaimed, moved by the earnestness of her voice and the calm conviction of her manner. Then he shook his head.

"It seems too good to be true."

"I can understand," she said, "the terrible strain you are all under, but, believe me, it will all come out right."

"They think the baby is bewitched,--that he has been voodooed,--if you know what that means. The negroes declare that an evil spirit can be seen moving around whatever spot the child inhabits."

"What utter nonsense!" cried Carolina. "I hope your brother has too much sense, too much religion, to encourage such a belief."

"My poor brother believes that the devil has marked him for his own."

"Does your brother believe in a devil?" asked Carolina.

"Why, don't you?" asked Moultrie, in a shocked tone.

"I was not aware that any enlightened person did nowadays," answered Carolina, with a lift of her chin.

The movement irritated her companion far more than her words, just as Carolina had intended it to.

There are some subjects which cannot be argued. They must be obliterated by a contempt which bites into one's self-love.

The mare saved the situation by a soft whinny. She turned her head expectantly, and, following her eyes, the riders saw the tall, lithe figure of a man making his way toward them through the underbrush. Moultrie gave vent to an exclamation.

"What is it?" asked Carolina.

"Oh, only a bad negro who haunts places where he has no business to. He is a perfect wonder with horses, and broke in that mare you are riding, who will follow him anywhere without a bridle, pushing her nose under his arm like any dog who thrusts a muzzle into your palm. He is always up to something. From present appearances, I should say that he had probably been bleeding your trees."

The negro, hearing voices, stopped, glanced in their direction, and promptly disappeared. Carolina only had time to notice that he was very black, but she followed him in thought, mentally denying dishonesty and declaring that harm could not come to her through error in any form.

She was struck, too, by the manner in which her sensitive, high-bred mare lifted her pretty head and looked after his retreating form, pawing the earth impatiently and sending out little snuffling neighs which were hardly more than bleatings. Surely, if a man had the power to call forth devoted love from such an animal, there must be much good in him!

"What makes you so quiet?" asked Moultrie, breaking in on her thought.

Carolina looked at him abruptly and decided her course of action.

"You have told me of the skeleton in your closet. Let me be equally frank and tell you of mine. I am a Christian Scientist."

"A what?"

"A Christian Scientist!"

"I never heard of one," said the young man, simply. "What is it?"

For the second time the girl's face flushed with a vicarious mortification.

"It is a new form of religion founded on a perfect belief in the life of Christ and a literal following of His commandments to His disciples, regardless of time," said Carolina, slowly.

Moultrie allowed a deep silence to follow her words. Then he drew a long breath.

"I think I should like that," he said. "Does it answer all your questions?"

"All! Every one of them!" she answered, with the almost too eager manner of the young believer in Christian Science. But an eagerness to impart good news and to relieve apparent distress should be readily forgiven by a self-loving humanity. Curiously, however, the most blatant ego is generally affronted by it.

"I was raised a Baptist," he said, reluctantly, "but I reckon I never was a very good one, for I never got any peace from it."

"My religion gives peace."

"And my prayers were never answered."

"My religion answers prayers."

"Not even when I lifted my heart to God in earnest pleading to spare my brother the unhappiness I felt sure would follow his marriage. How I prayed to be in time to prevent it! God never heard me!"

"My religion holds the answer to that unanswered prayer."

"Not even when I prayed, lying on the floor all night, for the life of my father."

"My religion heals the sick."

He turned to her eagerly.

"Do you believe so implicitly in Christ's teachings that you can reproduce His miracles?" he cried.

"Christ never performed any miracles. He healed sickness through the simplest belief in the world,--or rather an understanding of His Father's power. That same privilege of understanding is open to me--and to you. You have the power within you at this very moment to heal any disease, if you only know where to look for the understanding to show you how to use it."

"Do you believe that?"

"I do better than believe it. I understand it. I know it."

"Is there a book which will tell me how to find it?"

"Yes."

"Will you order it for me, or tell me where to order it?"

"It is a very expensive book," said Carolina, hesitatingly, thinking of the telegraph-office.

"How expensive?"

"Three dollars."

"Do you call that expensive for what you promise it will do?"

When Carolina looked at him, he saw that she was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes. And he understood.

"You only said that to try me."

And she nodded. Her heart was too full of mingled emotions for her to speak. She had loved, despised, been proud of, and mortified for this man,--all with poignant, pungent vehemence,--during this three-hour ride, and at the last he had humbled and rebuked her by his childlike readiness to believe the greatest truth of the ages. She sat her horse, biting her lips to keep back the tears.

"Give me just one fact to go on," he begged.

"Do you read your Bible?"

"I used to, till I found I was getting not to believe in it. Then I stopped for my dead father's sake. He believed in it implicitly."

"Then you have read the fourteenth chapter of John?"

"I got fifty cents when I was twelve years old for learning it by heart."

"Then run it over in your own mind until you come to the twelfth verse. When you get to that, say it aloud."

"'Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.'"

He did not glance her way again, which Carolina noticed with gratitude. It showed that he was not accepting it for her sake. Presently he spoke again.

"Did you yourself ever heal any one?"

"Through my understanding of Divine Love, I healed Gladys Yancey," she said, quietly.

The man's face flushed with his earnestness. He lifted his hat and rode bareheaded.

"Do you remember what the father of the dumb child said? 'Lord, I believe! Help thou mine unbelief!'"

When they rode in at the gates of Whitehall, Moultrie was astonished at the radiance of the girl's countenance. She seemed transfigured by love. Moultrie's ready belief had glorified her, and for the second time her grateful thought ascended in the words, "See what Divine Love hath wrought!"

CHAPTER XIV.

KINFOLK

Carolina took her writing materials out on the back porch. There was not a small table in the house whose legs did not wabble, so she propped the best of them with chips from Aunt Calla's wood-pile and wrote until Aunt Calla could stand it no longer.

"Miss Calline, honey," she said, "you writes so fas' wid yo' fingahs, would you min' ef I brung de aigplant out here to peel it en watch you? I won't make no fuss."

"Certainly not, Aunt Calla. I'd be glad to have you."

"Hum! hum! You sho have got pretty mannahs, Miss Calline. Youse got de mannahs ob de ole ladies of de South. You don't see 'em now'days wid de young ladies. De young people got de po'est mannahs I ebber did see,--screechin' and hollerin' to each odder 'cross de street, or from one eend ob de house to de other. Ole mahster would 'a' lammed his chillen ef dey'd cut up sech capers en his time! But Miss Peachie,--she's got de La Grange mannahs. She's Mist' Moultrie's sistah. Dey calls her 'Peachie' caze she's got such pretty red in huh cheeks,--lake yores. Most ladies down in dese pahts is too white to suit me. I lakes 'em pinky and pretty."

"Thank you, Aunt Calla!" cried Carolina. "I wonder if I couldn't get Cousin Lois to give you that black grenadine you thought was so pretty yesterday."

Aunt Calla laid down her knife.

"Miss Calline, is you foolin' me?"

"No, Calla, I am not."

"Dish yere grenadier dress I mean is lined wid black silk!"

"I know it."

"En you gwine gib dat to me?"

"I am thinking of it."

"Well, glory be! Ef you does dat, Ise gwine jine de chutch all over ag'in, en I reckon I'll jine de Babtis' dish yere time. Dey's mo' style to de Babtis' den to de Meth'diss. Ise 'bleeged to live up to dat silk linin'!"

The old woman's face took on a worried look.

"I don' keer!" she said aloud. "I don' keer! Nemmine, Miss Calline! You wouldn' laff so ef you knew what Ise studyin' 'bout doin'. Ise been savin' my money foh two years now to get a gravestone foh my fou'th husban' what done died three yeahs ago. He baiged me wid his las' breath to bury him stylish, en I promus him I would. He was all for style. Do you know, Miss Calline, dat man would 'a' gone hongry rathah dan turn his meat ovah awn de fiah. He was de mos' dudish man I ebber see. But I can't he'p it. Ise gwine take dat grave-stone money and hab dat dress made to fit me good en stylish. En I bet Miss Peachie will charge me eve'y cent I got to do it!"

"Who?" demanded Carolina.

"Miss Peachie La Grange. She does all my sewin' foh me, an' foh Lily, too. Dat's de way she mek huh money. Yas, ma'am. Sewin' foh niggahs!"

Aunt Calla paused with her mouth open, for Carolina, regardless of what anybody thought, sprang up, overturning her table, spilling her ink over Aunt Calla's clean porch floor, and scattering her papers to the four winds of heaven.

"Ump! So dat's de way de win' blows! Well, ef she ain't a Lee sho nuff. She's got de pride of huh ole gran'dad, en mo', too. She looked at me ez if she'd lake to kill me. I wondah ef I'll evah git dat dress now!"

She sent Lily to reconnoitre.

"Jes' creep up en see what she's doin'. De keyhole in huh room is busted, en you kin see de whole room thoo it. Jis' go en peek. But ef you let huh ketch you, she'll know who sont you, en she'll be so mad, I nevah will git dat dress. Den I'll bust yo' yallah face open wid de i'nin' boa'd!"

"She ain't cryin' nor nothin'!" cried Lily, bursting into the kitchen twenty minutes later. "She's settin' in huh rockin'-cheer, wid a open book awn huh lap, en huh eyes is shut en huh lips a-movin', lake she's studyin'."

"T'ank de Lawd!" observed Calla. "Somehow er odder, Ise gwine git hole ob a fryin' chicken foh huh. You tell Jake I wants tuh see him dis evenin'. Run, Lily! See who's dat drivin' in outen de big road!"

"Hit's de La Granges! De whole kit en bilin' ob 'em. Dey's done borried de Barnwells' double ca'y-all."

Fortunately, there were many rocking-chairs at Whitehall, and, although many of them were war veterans, all were pressed into service the day the La Granges came to call. Miss Sue and Miss Sallie Yancey glanced at each other expressively when they saw that even Flower, Mrs. Winfield La Grange, was one of the party. It was the first time that she had ever been openly recognized by the La Grange family, except in name, and no one knew that it was by Moultrie's express wish that Peachie had asked her to go with them. Thus, indirectly, Carolina was at the bottom of it, after all.

Peachie was pretty, but her delicate prettiness was scarcely noticeable when Carolina was in the room. Aunt Angie La Grange, Cousin Élise La Grange, Cousin Rose Manigault, with her little girl Corinne, who had come to play with Gladys and Emmeline Yancey,--all these insisted on claiming kin with Mrs. Winchester and Carolina, and, as Aunt Angie and Cousin Lois had known each other in their girlhood, and had spent much time at Guildford and Sunnymede, it was easy for them to fall into the old way of claiming cousinship, even when a slender excuse was called upon to serve.

The conversation was very gay and kindly, but, under cover of its universality, Carolina managed to seat herself next to Flower La Grange, whose pale cheeks and frightened eyes proclaimed how much of a stranger she was to such scenes. When Carolina called her "Cousin Flower," the flush on her face and the look of passionate gratitude in her eyes gave Carolina ample evidence that any kindness she might choose to bestow here would be appreciated beyond reason.

At first Flower was constrained and answered in monosyllables, but when Carolina adroitly mentioned the baby, Flower's whole manner thawed, and, in her eagerness, she poured forth a stream of rapturous talk which caused the others to look at her in a chilling surprise. But Flower's back was toward her haughty relatives, and only Carolina caught the glances,--Carolina, who calmly ignored them.

"You must come to see my baby!" cried Flower, impulsively. "He is so dear! And so smart! You can't imagine how hard it is to keep him asleep. He hears every sound and wants to be up all the time."

"I suppose he notices everything, doesn't he?"

"No-o, I can't say that he does. He likes things that make a noise. He doesn't care much for looks. If you hold a rattle right up before his eyes, he won't pay any attention to it. But, if you shake it, he smiles and coos and reaches out for it. Oh, he is a regular boy for noise!"

As Flower said this upon a moment of comparative silence, Carolina noticed that Aunt Angie grew rather pale and said:

"I haven't seen your baby for several months, Flower. May I come to see him to-morrow?"

"Oh, I should be so glad if you would, Mrs.--"

"Call me mother, child," said the older woman, looking compassionately at her daughter-in-law.

Flower flushed as delicately as a wild rose, and looked at Carolina, as if wondering if she had noticed this sudden access of cordiality. But to Carolina, a stranger, it seemed perfectly natural, and she rather hurriedly resumed her conversation with Flower, because she had the uneasy consciousness that Miss Sue and Aunt Angie, on the other side of the room, were talking about her. Fragments of their conversation floated over to her in the pauses of her talk with Flower.

"She thinks nothing of sending off ten or a dozen telegrams a day--"

"--she'll wear herself out--"

"--it can't last long. Moultrie says she shows a wonderful head for--"

"--and she never gets tired. I never saw such power of concentration--"

"--when I was a girl--"

"--writes--writes--writes the longest letters, and if you could see her mail!"

"--the very prettiest girl I ever saw,--a perfect beauty, Moultrie thinks."

Carolina's little ears burned so scarlet that she got up and took Peachie and Flower out into the garden, and, as the three girls went down the steps, a perfect babel of voices arose in the parlour. Plainly Carolina's going had loosened their tongues. They drew their chairs around Mrs. Winchester's, and, although the day was cool, they gave her the warmest half-hour she could remember since she left Bombay. They could understand and excuse every feminine vagary, from stealing another woman's lover to coaxing a man to spend more than he could afford, or idling away every moment of a day over novels or embroidery, but for a beauty, a belle, a toast, a girl who had been presented at three courts before she was twenty, to come down to South Carolina and live on horseback or in a buggy, meeting men by appointment and understanding long columns of figures, sending and receiving cipher telegrams, and in all this aided and abetted by no less exclusive and particular a chaperon than Cousin Lois Winchester, Rhett Winchester's widow, herself related to the Lees,--this was a little more than they could comprehend. Nor could Miss Sue Yancey nor Miss Sallie (Mrs. Pringle), although they were in the same house with her, throw any light on the subject or help them in any way. Carolina was plainly a puzzle to the La Granges, at least, and when, that same afternoon, Carolina and the two girls in the garden saw another carryall and a buggy drive in at Whitehall, containing her father's relatives, the Lees, she frankly said that she would stay out a little longer and give them a chance to talk her over before she went in to meet them.

Peachie laughed at Carolina's high colour when she said this.

"You mustn't get mad, Cousin Carol, because you are talked about. We talk about everybody,--it's all we have to do in the country. But you ought to be used to it. You are such a little beauty, you must have been talked about all your life."

"Nonsense, Peachie!" cried Carolina, blushing. "I am not half as good-looking as you and Flower. But the way you all watch me here makes me feel as if I were a strange kind of a beetle under a powerful microscope, at the other end of which there was always a curious human eye."

"Oh, Cousin Carol, you do say such quayah things!" cried Peachie, laughing.

"We ought to go in, I think," said Carolina. But at her words the two girls, as if nerving themselves for an ordeal planned beforehand, looked at each other, and then Peachie, in evident embarrassment, said:

"Cousin Carol, I want to ask you something, and I don't want you to be offended or to think that we have no manners, but--"

"Go on, Peachie, dear. Ask anything you like. You won't offend me. Remember that we are all cousins down here."

"I know, you dear! But maybe when you know what I want,--but you see, we never get a chance to see any of the styles--"

"Do you want to see my clothes?" cried Carolina. "You shall see every rag I possess, you dear children! Don't I know how awful it must be never to know what they are wearing at Church Parade. Five trunks came yesterday that haven't even been unpacked. They are just as they were packed by a frisky little Frenchman in Paris, and, as they were sent after me, they were detained in the custom-house, and, before I could get them out, I was hurt. While I was in bed, my brother got them out of the custom-house and took them to his house, where I forgot all about them until I was preparing to come here. Then I thought of clothes! And I also thought I might find some pretty girls down here among my relatives who would like to see the Real Thing just as it comes from the hands of the Paris couturières,--so there you are!"

"Oh, Carolina Lee!" shrieked Peachie, softly. "What a sweet thing you are! Just think, Flower, Paris clothes!"

"And better still, Vienna clothes!" said Carolina, laughing.

"You said you were hurt, Cousin Carol," said Flower, in her soft little voice. "How were you injured?"

"I was thrown from my horse, Flower, dear, and my hip was broken. I was in bed for months with it."

"But you were cured," said Flower. "I never heard of a broken hip that didn't leave a limp. There must be mighty fine doctors in New York."

"There are!" said Carolina, softly. Then she turned suddenly and led the way to the house, the girls eagerly following.

It will be difficult and not at all to the point to try to learn the relationship of the Lees and La Granges to Carolina and to each other. Aunt Angie La Grange was Moultrie's, Winfield's, and Peachie's mother. Rose Manigault was Aunt Angie's married sister, and Élise an unmarried one.

Of the Lees, there was Aunt Evelyn Lee, Carolina's own maiden aunt. Aunt Isabel Fitzhugh, her married aunt, with her two daughters, Eppie and Marie. Uncle Gordon Fitzhugh, Aunt Isabel's husband, and a bachelor cousin of Carolina's, De Courcey Lee, were the ones who had come in the buggy with the two little Fitzhugh boys, Teddy and Bob.

The children could not be induced to leave the parlour until they had seen their new cousin, they had heard so much of her beauty from Moultrie, so that, when Carolina entered and was introduced to her admiring relatives, none was more admiring than the children. Indeed, Bob Fitzhugh announced to his father, as they were driving home that evening, that he was going to marry Cousin Carol. He said that he had already asked her, and that she had told him that she was ten years older than he was, but that, if he still wanted her when he was twenty-one and she hadn't married any one in the meantime, she would marry him.

"You couldn't do better, son," said his father, nudging De Courcey, "and I commend your promptness, for, as Carolina is the prettiest--the very prettiest little woman I ever saw, the other boys will doubtless get after her, and it's just as well to have filed your petition beforehand."

Indeed the verdict on Carolina was universally favourable. Her relatives were familiar with her photographs, and were proud of the accounts which at intervals had filtered home to them through letters and newspapers, but the girl's beauty of colouring had so far outshone their expectations, and her exquisite modesty had so captivated them that they annexed her bodily, and quoted her and praised and flattered her until she hardly knew where to turn. She won the Fitzhugh hearts by her devotion to Teddy, the seven-year-old boy, who could not speak an intelligible word on account of a cleft palate. She took him with her on the sofa and talked to him and encouraged him to try to answer, until the mother, though her soul was filled with the most passionate gratitude, unselfishly called the boy away, saying, in a hurried aside to Carolina:

"Thank you, and God bless you, my darling girl, for trying to help my baby boy, but you owe your attention to the grown people, who, some of them, have driven twenty miles to see your sweet face. Some day, Carolina, I want you to come and spend a week with us, and tell me about the best doctor to send the child to. You must know all about such things, coming from New York."

She won the heart of her bachelor cousin, a man of nearly sixty, by allowing him to lead her to a sofa and question her about her father, his last days in London, and of how she had inherited her love for Guildford.

"For it is an inheritance, Carolina, my dear. Your father loved the place as not one of us do who have stayed near it."

"Yes, Cousin De Courcey, I think you are right. Daddy used to dream of it."

"Did he ever tell you of the loss of the family silver?"

"Yes, he said it was lost during the war."

"Did he never tell you of his suspicions concerning it?"

"No, because I don't think he had any."

"Pardon me for disagreeing with you, my dear, but in letters to me he has stated it. You know our family silver included many historical pieces,--gifts from great men, who had been guests at Guildford,--besides all that the family had inherited on both sides for generations. Many of these pieces were engraved and inscribed, and, unless they were melted at once, could have been traced. Your grandfather and your father, being the only ones fortunate enough to have increased their fortunes, undertook to search the world over for traces of this silver, but, as not so much as a teaspoon of it was ever found, we think it is still buried somewhere near here,--possibly on the estate. Aunt 'Polyte, your father's black mammy, and her husband buried it, and to the day of their death they swore it was not stolen by the Yankees, for, when they missed it, there were no Federal troops within fifty miles. They both declared that some one traced them in their frequent pilgrimages to its hiding-place to ascertain that it was intact, and that the Lee family will yet come into its own. As you seem to be our good angel, it will probably be you who will find it. Doesn't something tell you that you will?"

"Yes, something tells me that it is not lost," said Carolina, with grave eyes. "I came into the possession of Guildford so wonderfully, perhaps I shall find the Lee silver by the same means."

Just then Mrs. Pringle hurried into the room, saying hospitably:

"Now listen to me, good people. You all don't come to Whitehall so often that we don't feel the honour, and now that you are here, you must stay to supper. Don't say a word! I'll tell Jake to hitch up and go after Moultrie and Winfield, and there's a full moon to-night, so you won't have any trouble in getting home. Élise, if you are too big a coward to drive twenty miles after dark, you can stay here all night. Flower, do you trust your nurse to stay with the baby?"

"Oh, yes, indeed, thank you, Miss Sallie. I'll just write a note to Winfield and send it by Jake, if I may, telling him to see that Aunt Tempy and the baby are all right before he starts, then I won't be a bit uneasy."

The La Granges had never heard their unpopular kinswoman make so long a speech before, and, as they listened to it, with critical, if not hostile ears, they were forced to admit that she exhibited both spirit and breeding, and her voice had a curious low-toned dignity which indicated an inherited power.

Whitehall had not been famous for its hospitality since the death of Elliott Pringle, Miss Sallie's husband. During his lifetime they had kept open house, and Miss Sallie was the soul of hospitality. She would dearly have loved to continue his policy and the prestige of Whitehall, but her sister, Sue Yancey, was, in popular parlance, called "the stingiest old maid in the State of Georgia," and when she came to live with her widowed sister she watched the expenditures at Whitehall, until nobody who ever dined there had enough to eat. There was a story going around that the reason she lost the only beau she ever had, was because once when he was going on a journey she asked him to take out an accident insurance policy, and when he told her that he was all alone in the world and that no one would be benefited by his death, she told him to send the ticket to her. Rumour said that he sent the ticket, but that he never came back to Sue.

Sue either cared nothing for the good opinion of other people or she made the mistake of underestimating her friends' intelligence, for she carried her thrift with a high hand. At Sunday-school picnics it was no uncommon sight for the neighbours to see Miss Sue Yancey going around to the different tables gathering all that was edible into her basket to take home with her. And that these scraps subsequently appeared on the table at Whitehall often led to high words between the sisters; but in the end it always happened that Sue conquered, because Mrs. Pringle dreaded her sister's bitter tongue and ungoverned temper.

Yet Sue often complained that she felt so alone in the world because no one understood her.

"Don't stay," whispered Gordon Fitzhugh, in his wife's ear. "Sue never gives me enough sugar in my tea!"

Carolina could not help overhearing. She looked up quickly and laughed.

"Are you getting thin?" he whispered. "Does Sue give you as hash for supper the beef the soup is made from?"

"I think Miss Sallie is ordering while we are here," said Carolina, loyally. She would not tell her Uncle Fitzhugh that one morning when Lily was taking Cousin Lois's breakfast up to her, when her asthma was bad, that Sue had waylaid Lily in the hall and had taken the extra butter ball off the tray and carried it back to the dining-room in triumph.

"I admire economy," said Uncle Fitzhugh. "Sue's ancestors were French, but, in her case, French thrift has degenerated into American meanness."

"You stay," said Carolina, dimpling, "and I'll see that you get all the sugar you want, if I have to ask for it myself!"

"Then I'll stay," chuckled Uncle Fitzhugh, and he beckoned to De Courcey to come out into the garden and have a smoke--in reality to gossip.

Hardly were the gentlemen out of sight when Peachie said, excitedly:

"Mamma, do beg them all to excuse Cousin Carol, Flower, and me! Carol has promised to show us her Paris clothes--five trunks full of them!" Her voice rose to a little shriek of ecstasy, which was echoed in various keys all over the room. Every face took on a look of intense excitement and anticipation.

"Excuse you!" cried Aunt Angie La Grange. "We shall do no such thing. If Carol thinks we old people are not just as crazy over pretty clothes as we were when we were girls, she doesn't know the temperament of her own blood and kin. Carol, child, lead the way to those trunks immediately. My fingers fairly burn to turn the keys in those locks!"

"Really, Aunt Angie? Why, we shall be delighted. You should see the gowns Cousin Lois had made for the Durbar. They are simply regal!"

"Lois Winchester," said Aunt Angie, as they went up-stairs, "they tell me that you actually rode an elephant while you were in India!"

"I did, Cousin Angie," said Mrs. Winchester, imperturbably. "And what is more, I had my picture taken on one. You can hardly tell me from the elephant!"

Now Cousin Lois so seldom jested that this sally met with the usual reception which non-jokers seem to expect, and the walls fairly reeled with the peals of laughter from the delighted kinfolk. But when they were all gathered in Carolina's room and the chairs were brought from all the other rooms to seat the guests, a hush fell upon the assemblage similar to that which falls upon Westminster Abbey when a funeral cortège arrives.

Carolina was unlocking her Paris trunks!

CHAPTER XV.

THE BLIND BABY

The same terrible suspicion which had entered Aunt Angie La Grange's mind when she overheard Flower's innocent words had occurred to Carolina, and as there seemed to be one of those sudden new-born bonds of sympathy between the beautiful old woman and the beautiful young girl, which sometimes spring into existence without warning, yet with good reason, as afterwards transpires, Carolina was not surprised to have Aunt Angie draw her aside after supper and say:

"Carolina, child, what did you think when you heard what Flower said about little Arthur?"

"I thought just what you thought, Aunt Angie, at first, then--"

"Then what?"

"Nothing."

"Now, Carol, you were going to say something! What was it? I am sure the thought that I am a comparative stranger to you stopped the words on your lips."

"I am afraid that you wouldn't understand what I was going to say, Aunt Angie, dear, and I don't want to antagonize you. I like you too much."

"Dear child, nothing that your silver tongue could utter could antagonize me after your sweet generosity to my daughter this afternoon. Oh, Carol, don't you think my mother-heart aches at not being able to dress my pretty girl in such fairy fabrics as you showed us? And then to think of your giving her that pink silk! Why, Peachie won't sleep a wink for a week, and I doubt if her mother does, either! Now she can go to the Valentine German in Savannah. You must go, too. I will arrange it. I--but my tongue is running away with me. Tell me what you were going to say."

"Well," said Carolina, hesitatingly, "you have heard that I am a Christian Scientist, haven't you?"

"Yes, dear, I have, and I must say that I deeply regret it. Not that I know anything about it, but--"

"That's the way every one feels who doesn't know about it," cried Carolina, earnestly; "but that is nothing but prejudice which will wear away. Indeed, indeed it will, Aunt Angie."

Mrs. La Grange shook her head.

"I am a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian, and I've fought, bled, and died for my religion in a family who believe that God created the Church of England first and then turned His attention to the creation of the earth, so you can't expect me to welcome a new fad, can you, my dear? But I beg your pardon, Carol. What were you going to say?"

"It was only this," said Carolina, gently. "That even if Flower's baby is blind to mortal sight, he is not blind in God's eyes. There he is perfect, for God, who is Incarnate Love, never created a blind or dumb baby."

Tears rushed suddenly to the old woman's eyes.

"Are you thinking of poor little Teddy Fitzhugh?" she whispered.

"Yes, I was."

"Oh, Carolina! If you could have seen his mother's anguish all these years! But you would have to be a mother yourself before you could even apprehend it."

"Yes, I suppose I would."

"And now," said the older woman, with that patient tightening of the lips with which so many Christian women prepare themselves to bear the heart-breaking calamities which they believe a tender Heavenly Father inflicts on those He loves, "I suppose I must steel my heart to see poor Flower writhe under a worse agony. Indeed, Carol, God's ways are hard to understand."

"Yes, God is such a peculiar sort of parent," observed Carolina. "He seems to do things with impunity, which if an earthly father did, the neighbours would lynch him."

Aunt Angie La Grange sat up with a spring of fright.

"Why, Carolina Lee! What sacrilege! You will certainly be punished by an avenging God for such blasphemy. You shock me, Carolina. You really do."

"Forgive me, Aunt Angie. I only meant to imply that the God I believe in is a God of such love that He never sends anything but good to His children."

"Then how do you get around that saying, 'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth?'"

"There is authority for translating that word 'chasteneth,' 'instructeth.' But even if you leave it 'chasteneth,' it doesn't mean a life-long disfigurement or crippling of innocent babies. Supposing Peachie should disobey you, or even disgrace you, would you deliberately infect her with smallpox to destroy her beauty or send her into a train wreck to lame her or paralyze for life?"

Mrs. La Grange only looked into Carolina's eyes for reply, but her hands gripped the arms of her chair until her nails were white.

"Yet you are only her earthly--her human--her finite mother. How much greater capacity has the Infinite Heart for love!"

Mrs. La Grange stirred restlessly.

"It is beautiful," she breathed, "but--disquieting. It upsets all my old beliefs."

"'And good riddance to bad rubbish,' as we children used to say," said Carolina, smiling. Aunt Angie smiled in answer, but a trifle dubiously.

"Carolina," she said, "Moultrie told me--but of course you never said such a thing and I told him then that he must have misunderstood you--that Gladys Yancey was cured by Christian Science! Now, what did you say?"

"I said just that. She was cured by Christian Science."

"I don't believe it!" cried Aunt Angie. "Excuse me, dear child, for saying so. I know that you are truthful and that you believe it, but I don't. I'd have to see it done."