Only a question of time! But what is every race? The space between winner and loser strikes the senses more obviously; but the race is just as much a question of time as of space. Buridan runs second for the Derby, defeated by a length. But give Buridan a start of one second, and he shall beat the winner—by two lengths.
Little now wrote from Chicago that every thing was going on favorably, and he believed it would end in a sale of the patent clip in the United States and Canada for fifty thousand dollars, but no royalty.
This letter was much shorter than any of the others; and, from that alone, his guilty reader could see that the writer intended to follow it in person almost immediately.
Coventry began almost to watch the sun in his course. When it was morning he wished it was evening, and when it was evening he wished it was morning.
Sometimes he half wondered to see how calmly the sun rose and set, and Nature pursued her course, whilst he writhed in the agony of suspense, and would gladly have given a year out of his life for a day.
At last, by Mr. Carden's influence, the wedding-day was fixed. But soon after this great triumph came another intercepted letter. He went to his room and his hands trembled violently as he opened it.
His eye soon fixed on this passage:
“I thought to be in New York by this time, and looking homeward; but I am detained by another piece of good-fortune, if any thing can be called good-fortune that keeps me a day from you. Oh, my dear Grace, I am dying to see your handwriting at new York, and then fly home and see your dear self, and never, never quit you more. I have been wonderfully lucky; I have made my fortune, our fortune. But it hardly pays me for losing the sight of you so many months. But what I was going to tell you is, that my method of forging large axes by machinery is wonderfully praised, and a great firm takes it up on fair terms. This firm has branches in various parts of the world, and, once my machines are in full work, Hillsborough will never forge another ax. Man can not suppress machinery; the world is too big. That bullet sent through Mr. Tyler's hat loses Great Britain a whole trade. I profit in money by their short-sighted violence, but I must pay the price; for this will keep me another week at Chicago, perhaps ten days. Then home I come, with lots of money to please your father, and an ocean of love for you, who don't care about the filthy dross; no more do I, except as the paving-stones on the road to you and heaven, my adored one.”
The effect of this letter was prodigious. So fearful had been the suspense, so great was now the relief, that Coventry felt exultant, buoyant. He went down to the sea-side, and walked, light as air, by the sands, and his brain teemed with delightful schemes. Little would come to Hillsborough soon after the marriage, but what of that?
On the wedding-night he would be at Dover. Next day at Paris, on his way to Rome, Athens, Constantinople. The inevitable exposure should never reach his wife until he had so won her, soul and body, that she should adore him for the crimes he had committed to win her—he knew the female heart to be capable of that.