"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?"