"The Holy Ghost!" thought Carolina. "I wonder what that really is. That is one of the things I never could understand in the old thought."
She turned to the Glossary in "Science and Health," and there the first definition of Holy Ghost was "Divine Science."
"I am answered," she said, with a sigh of complete satisfaction. "For the first time in my life I begin to understand the fourteenth chapter of John."
She leaned her head against the window-pane to watch the postman come down the street. Then she heard his whistle, and presently the maid brought her a letter. She asked the maid to turn on the electric light, and, when she had done so and left the room, Carolina read the following letter:
"LONDON, May 6, 19--
"MY DEAR MISS CAROLINA:--You have rejected my suit so often, when I had no inducement to offer you except a heart which beats for you alone, which seems to be no temptation to you, that I shall not pay you the poor compliment of offering myself to you again when, as you must have heard, I have become the owner of Guildford.
"But, having heard of your great misfortune and of your change of religion, and knowing that you love the old home so ardently that its atmosphere might effect a cure when all else failed, I beg you to accept Guildford as it stands, as a gift from your father's old friend,
"WAYNE YANCEY."
Carolina's first impulse, having read the letter twice, was one of the cold fury she used to feel when a child, and she turned pale with a rage which was unspeakable in its violence.
Too well she saw through the malice of the whole affair. Colonel Yancey knew that, after her first impact of anger had passed, her next thought would be to wish she could buy the estate back, and these terms he intended to make prohibitive. Carolina wondered if he expected to wear out her patience, and so force her to marry him, or what? She could not hope to follow with accuracy the tortuous windings of a mind as intricate as Colonel Yancey's, and she despaired of ever realizing that the labyrinth could untwist into the straight and narrow way to which she was accustomed. But, so far from crushing her, this letter simply roused in her the valiant spirit of the Lees. So far from feeling downhearted, she began to sing.