fects of his qualities, but
he was different from others in this: his temper was quick and blazing
when roused, yet on rare occasions it could hold its heat and smoulder,
and keep alive indefinitely.

When in this condition he shewed nothing of his feelings except towards
the person against whom he was in wrath.

Towards them he exhibited the two main characteristics of the North
Pole--Distance and Ice.

Phyl felt the frost almost immediately. He talked to her just the same as
of old but his pleasantness and laughter were gone and he never sought her
eye. She knew at once that it was the business with Silas that had caused
this change, and she would have been entirely miserable but for the
knowledge of two great facts: she was innocent of any disloyalty to him,
he had broken off his engagement to Frances Rhett. Instinct told her that
he cared for her, Miss Pinckney had told her the same thing.

Yet day after day passed without bringing the slightest change in Richard
Pinckney.

That gentleman after many debates with himself had arrived at the
determination against will, against reason, against Love, and against
nature to have nothing more to do with Phyl.

Old Pepper Pinckney, that volcano of the past had suffered a fancied
insult from his wife; no one knew of it, no one suspected it till on his
death his will disclosed it by the fact that he had left the lady--one
dollar. The will being unwitnessed--that was the sort of man he was--did
not hold; all the same, it held an unsuspected part of his character up
for public inspection.

Richard, incapable of such an act, still had Pepper Pinckney for an
ancestor. Ancestors leave us more than their pictures.

Having come to this momentous decision, he arrived at another.

One morning at breakfast he announced his intention of going to New York
on business, he would start on the morrow and be gone a month. The
Beauregards had always been bothering him to go on a visit and he might as
well kill two birds with one stone.

Miss Pinckney made little resistance to the idea. She had noticed the
coolness between the young people; knowing how much they cared one for the
other she had little fear as to the end of the matter and she fancied a
change might do good.

But to Phyl it seemed that the end of the world had come.

All that day she scarcely spoke except to Miss Pinckney. She was like a
person stunned by some calamity.

Richard Pinckney, notwithstanding the fact th