in hand.

"Where on earth have you been?" said he.

"Out in the woods," said Phyl, entering quite unconcerned and removing her
cloak. "A fox got trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and
couldn't find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the door; lucky you were
up. I saw the light in the library shining through a crack in the shutters
and knocked."

Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the bolts. He said nothing.
Had Phyl been another girl, he might have laughed and joked over the
matter, but care of Phyl's well-being was now part of his business in life
and that consideration just checked his speech. There was nothing at all
wrong in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream of making the
slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom of a young girl wandering
about in the woods at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which
disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness.

Phyl, who was as sensitive to impressions as a radiometer to light, noted
the silence of the other and resented it as she hung up her old hat and
cloak. She knew nothing of the true facts of the case, she looked on
Pinckney as a being almost of her own age, and that he should dare to
express disapproval of an act of hers not concerning him, even by silence,
was an intolerable insult. She knew that she loathed him now.--Prig!

This was the first real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of
Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco of it.

Phyl, having hung up the hat and coat, turned without a word, marched into
the library and finding the book she had been reading that day, put it
under her arm.

"Good night," said she as she passed him in the hall.

"Good night," he replied.

He watched her disappearing up the stairs, stood for a moment irresolute,
and then went into the library. He knew he had offended her and he knew
exactly how he had offended her. There are silences that can be more
hurting than speech--yet what could he have said? He rummaged in his mind
to find something he might have said and could find nothing more
appropriate than a remark about the weather and the fineness of the night.
Yet a bald and decrepit remark like that would have been as bad almost as
silence, for it would have ignored the main point at issue--the
night-wandering of his ward.

He sat down again for a moment in the armchair by the fireplace and began
to wrestle with the position in which he found