e between there and Fort Sumpter is all deep water.
How'd you like to be a sailor?"

"Wouldn't mind," said Phyl.

"How'd you like to take a boat--I mean a decent sized fishing yawl and go
off round the world, or even down Florida way? Florida's fine, you don't
know Florida, it's got two coasts and it's hard to tell which is the best.
From Indian River right round and up to Cedar Keys there's all sorts of
fishing, and you can camp out on the reefs; one cooks one's own food and
you can swim all day. There's tarpon and barracuda and sword fish, and
nights when there's a moon you could see to read a book."

"How jolly!"

"Let's go there?"

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, just you and I. I'm fed up with everything. We could have a boatman
to help sail and steer."

He spoke lightly and laughingly, and without much enthusiasm and as though
he were talking to some one of his own sex, and Phyl, not knowing how to
take him, said nothing.

He went on, his tone growing warmer.

"I'm not joking, I'm dead sick of Grangersons and Charleston, and I reckon
you are too--aren't you?"

"No."

"You may think so, but you are, all the same, without knowing it."

"I think you are talking nonsense," said Phyl hurriedly, fighting against
a deadly sort of paralysis of mind such as one may suppose comes upon the
mind of a bird under the spell of a serpent.

"No one could be kinder than Miss Pinckney, and so no one could be happier
than I am. I love Vernons."

"All the same," said Silas, "you are not really alive there. It's the life
of a cabbage, must be, there's only you and Maria and--Pinckney. Maria is
a decent old sort but she's only a woman, and as for Pinckney--he doesn't
care for you."

This statement suddenly brought Phyl to herself. It went through her like
a knife. She had ceased to think of Richard Pinckney in any way but as a
friend. At one time, during the first couple of days at Vernons, her heart
had moved mysteriously towards him; the way he had connected himself
through Prue's message with the love story of Juliet had drawn her towards
him, but that spell had snapped; she was conscious only of friendliness
towards Richard Pinckney. Why, then, this sudden pain caused by Silas's
words?

"How do you know?" she flashed out. "What right have you to dare--" She
stopped.

The blaze of her anger seemed to Silas evidence that she cared for
Pinckney.

"You're in love with him," said he, flying out. The bald and brutal
sta