“Miss Berknowles.”
“In what way did I couple your name with her, may I ask?”
“No, you mayn’t.” Richard had turned pale before the calm insolence of the other. “You know quite well what you said and if you are a gentleman you will apologise— If you aren’t you won’t and I will deal with you in Charleston accordingly.”
Phyl was at that moment coming out of the supper room with young Reggie Calhoun—the same who, according to Richard that morning at breakfast long ago, was an admirer of Maria Pinckney.
She saw the two men, in profile, facing one another, and she saw Silas’s right hand, which he was holding behind his back, opening and shutting convulsively.
She saw the blow given by Pinckney, she saw Silas step back and the knife which he always carried, as the wasp carries its sting, suddenly in his hand.
Then she was gripping his wrist.
Face to face with madness for a moment, holding it, fighting eye to eye.
Had she faltered, had her gaze left his for the hundredth part of a second, he would have cast her aside and fallen upon his prey.
It was her soul that held him, her spirit—call it what you will, the something that speaks alone through the eye.