"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!"