Richard Pinckney’s mind was disturbed.
Only the day before he had proposed to Frances Rhett and had been accepted. No one knew anything of the engagement; they had decided to say nothing about it for a while, but just keep it to themselves. The trouble with Pinckney was that Frances had, so to say, put the words of the proposal into his mouth. Frances had flirted with every man in Charleston; out of them all she had chosen Pinckney as a permanent attaché, not because she was in love with him but because he pleased her best. She matched him against the others, as a woman matches silk.
Pinckney had allowed himself to be led along; there is nothing easier than to be led along by a pretty woman. When the trap had closed on him he recognised the fact without resenting it. He was no longer a free man.
Phyl had told him this without speaking. For some time past he had been admiring her, and yesterday on returning in chains from Calhoun Street, Phyl picking roses in the garden seemed to him the prettiest picture he had seen for a long time, but it did not give him pleasure; it stirred the first vague uneasy recognition that his chains had wrought. He had no right to look at any girl but Frances—and he had been looking at her for a year without the picture stirring any wild enthusiasm in his mind.
Miss Pinckney’s revelation as to Silas had come to him as a blow. He could not tell what had hit him or exactly where he had been hit. What did it matter to him if a dozen men were in love with Phyl? What right had he to feel injured? None, yet he felt injured all the same.
As he sat by her now in the lamp-lit piazza, the thought that would not leave his mind was the thought that Silas had kissed her.
Behind the thought was the feeling of the boy who sees the other boy going off with the ripest and rosiest apple.
And Phyl was charming to-night. Something seemed to have happened to her, increasing the power of her personality, her voice seemed ever so slightly changed, her manner was different.
This was a woman, distinct from the girl of yesterday, as the full blown from the half blown flower.
They talked of trifles for a while, and then he remembered something that he ought to have mentioned before. The Rhetts were giving a dance and they had sent an invitation to Phyl as well as Miss Pinckney.