The widow wrote a conventional note of combined self-condolence and congratulation for Jonathan over his inheritance. Between the lines Flint quite easily read that her latent aversion to him was augmented by her husband's bequest. "I have decided," she wrote, "to go at once to London, where I shall probably reside for some years. I shall therefore strip my house of furniture preparatory to renting. I will pack up the books which now belong to you, and await your instructions as to the address to which you would like them forwarded. Should we not meet again--and I presume you will agree with me that it is hardly worth while to interrupt your studies at Cambridge for a trip to New York before the steamer sails--pray accept my best wishes for your future happiness and prosperous career." With this cool leave-taking Flint's association with his aunt had come to an end. The books, which were his earliest friends, followed him about from place to place, until at length they had found a home on the walls of his study in "The Chancellor." The work of his first solitary evening after his return from Nepaug was to pull off the sheets and newspapers with which the caretaker of his room had vainly striven to protect them against the all-pervading dust of summer. He sat in his easy-chair, running over the titles with the endeared eye of long familiarity. There stood a set of Edwards's treatises, in eight ponderous volumes; their leaves yellow with age, and cut only here and there at irregular intervals. "Freedom of the Will" and "The Nature of Virtue" jostled "Original Sin;" and "The History of Redemption" leaned up against "God's Last End in the Creation of the World."