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. "It will be here by the morning post, I expect," said he. "You'd like to go, wouldn't you?" Phyl hesitated for a moment. "Is that--I mean is that young lady Miss Frances Rhett--the one who called here?" "Yes," cut in Pinckney, "those are the people. You'll come, won't you?" "Is Miss Pinckney going?" "She--of course she's going, she goes to everything, and old Mrs. Rhett is anxious to meet you." "It is very kind of them," said Phyl. "Yes, I'll come." But she spoke without enthusiasm, and it seemed to him that a chill had come over her. Did she know of his entanglement with Frances Rhett? And could it be-- He put the question aside. He had no right to indulge in any fancies at all about Phyl as regarded himself. Then Miss Pinckney came out on the piazza and Phyl rose to go into the house. CHAPTER IX When Silas Grangerson left the cemetery of St. Michael's he walked for half a mile without knowing or caring in what direction he was going. Phyl had done more than slap his face. She had slapped his pride, his assurance of himself, and his desire for her all at the same time. Silas rarely bothered about girls, yet he knew that he had the power to fascinate any woman once he put his mind to the work. He had not tried his powers of fascination on Phyl. It was the other way about. Phyl absolutely unconsciously had used her fascination upon him. Something in her, recognised by him on their first meeting in the stable yard, had put away the barrier of sex. He had talked to her as if she had been a boy. Sitting on the seat beside her whilst the Colonel had been prosing over politics and tobacco, the prompting came to Silas to pinch her finger just for fun; when he had put his hands over her eyes that night it was in obedience to the same prompting, but at the moment of parting from her, a desire quite new had overmastered him. He had kissed a good many girls, but never in his life had he kissed a girl as he kissed Phyl. Something cynical in his feelings for the other sex had always left him somewhat cold, but Phyl was different from the others, she had in some way struck straight at his real being. When he left her that night at Grangersons he was almost as disturbed as she.