t too. I want to have it always just as it is. I didn't tell you, but
when that happened in the cemetery, I was looking at her grave; you never
told me it was there with his. I came on it by accident and she was
seeming to speak to me out of it. I was thinking of her and him,
when--that happened. It was just as though some one had struck _her_ and
him. I can't explain exactly."

"Strange," said Miss Pinckney.

She turned and began to put away with a thoughtful air the linen she had
been examining. Then she said:

"I'll tell Richard and warn him to keep away from that fool, not that
there is any danger--but it is just as well to warn him."

Phyl helped to put away the linen and then she went upstairs to her room.
She felt easier in her mind and taking her seat on a cane couch by the
window she fell into a book. The History of the Civil War. This bookworm
had always one sure refuge in trouble--books.

Books! Have we ever properly recognised the mystery and magic that lies in
that word, the magic that allows a man to lead ever so many other lives
than his own, to be other people, to travel where he has never been, to
laugh with folk he has never seen, to know their sorrows as he can never
know the sorrows of "real people"--and their joys.

Phyl had been Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre, Monte Cristo and Jo.

History which is so horribly unreal because it deals with real people had
never appealed to her, but the history of the Civil War was different from
others.

It had to do with Vernons.

CHAPTER VIII

After luncheon that day Phyl, having nothing better to do, went up to her
room and resumed her book.

Richard Pinckney had not come in to luncheon, he rarely returned home for
the meal, yet all the same, his absence made her uneasy. Suppose Silas
Grangerson had met him--suppose they had fought? She called to
recollection Silas's face just after she had struck him, the insane
malevolence in it, the ugliness that had suddenly destroyed his good
looks. Silas was capable of anything, he would never forgive that blow and
he would try to return it, of that she felt certain. He could not avenge
himself on her but he could on Richard. He imagined that she cared for
Richard Pinckney. Did she? The question came to her again in Miss
Pinckney's voice--she did not even try to answer it. As though it
irritated her, she tossed the book she was holding in her hand to the
floor and lay with her eyes fixed on the lace wind