Outside Phyl stood for a moment to breathe the warm scented air and look around her.
To be treated like a child by any other person than Maria Pinckney would have incensed her, all the same to be told to do a thing because it was good for her, or because it was a pleasant thing to do, in the teller’s opinion, was an almost certain way of making her do the exact opposite.
The garden did not attract her, the place did.
That cypress avenue with the sun upon it, that broad sweep of drive in front of the house, the distant peeps of country between trees and the languorous lazy atmosphere of the perfect day fascinated her mind. She came along the house front to the right, and found herself at the gate of the stable yard.
The stable yard of Grangersons was an immense flagged quadrangle bounded on the right, counting from the point of entrance, by the kitchen premises.
There was stable room for forty horses, coach-house accommodation for a dozen or more carriages.
The car had been run into one of the coach-houses and the yard stood empty, sunlit, silent, save for the voices of the pigeons wheeling in the air, or strutting on the roof of the great barn adjoining the stables.
One of the stable doors was open and as Phyl crossed the yard a young man appeared at the open door, shaded his eyes and looked at her. Then he came forward. It was Silas Grangerson, and Phyl thought he was the handsomest and most graceful person she had ever seen in her life.
Silas was a shade over six feet in height, dark, straight, slim yet perfectly proportioned; his face was extraordinary, the most vivid thing one would meet in a year’s journey, and with a daring, and at times, almost a mad look unforgettable when once glimpsed. Like the Colonel and like his ancestors Silas had a direct way with women.
“Hallo,” said he, with the sunny smile of old acquaintanceship, “where have you sprung from?”