All the same she could not free herself from the impression he had made upon her, she could not drive him from her mind, he had in some way paralysed her volition, called forces to his aid from some unknown part of her nature, perhaps with those kisses which she still felt upon the very face of her soul.
She came down to breakfast, and afterwards finding herself alone with Miss Pinckney, she took Silas’s letter from her pocket and handed it to her. She had been debating in her own mind all breakfast time as to whether she ought to show the letter; the struggle had been between her instinct to do the right thing, and a powerful antagonism to this instinct which was a new thing in her.
The latter won.
And then, lo and behold, when she found herself alone with Miss Pinckney in the sunlit breakfast room, almost against her will and just as though her hand had moved of its own volition, she put it in her pocket and produced the letter.
Miss Pinckney read it.
“Well, of all the crazy creatures!” said she. “Why, he has only met you once. He’s mad! No, he isn’t—he’s a Grangerson. I know them.”
She stopped short and re-read the letter, turned it about and then laid it down.
“Just as if he’d known you for years. And you scarcely spoke to him. Did he say anything to you as if he cared for you?”
“No, he didn’t,” said Phyl quite truthfully.
“Did he look at you as if he cared for you?”