When the contract is signed, when the china vase is broken, all the regret in the world will not alter the fact.
It was not till they had gone ten miles on their way that the regret came, sudden and painful as the stab of a dagger.
Miss Pinckney’s kindly old face suddenly rose up before Phyl. She would have been waiting breakfast for her. She saw the breakfast room, sunny and pleasant, the tea urn on the table, the garden through the open window—
Then came the thought—what matter.
All that was lost to her anyhow. It did not matter in the least what she did.
She was running away with Silas Grangerson.
She had a vague sort of idea that they were running away to be married, that she would have to explain things to Colonel Grangerson when they got to the house and that things would arrange themselves somehow.
But now, she sat voiceless beside her companion, answering only in monosyllables when he spoke; a voice began to trouble her, a voice that repeated the half statement, half question, over and over again.
“You are running away to be married to Silas Grangerson?”
She was running away from her troubles, from the prospect of returning to Ireland, from the idea of banishment from Vernons. She was running away out of anger against the woman who had taken Richard. She was running away because of pique, anger and the reckless craving to smash everything and dash everything to pieces—but to marry Silas Grangerson!