When Richard came up to her a little later on, he found himself coldly received; she had no dances for him except a few at the bottom of the programme.
"You shouldn"t have been late," said she.
"Well," he said, "it was not my fault. You know what Aunt Maria is, she kept us ten minutes after the carriage was round, and then Phyl wasn"t ready."
"She looks ready enough now," said the other, looking at Phyl and the cl.u.s.ter of young men around her. "What delayed her? Was she dyeing her head? It doesn"t look quite so loud as when I saw her last."
"Her head"s all right," replied Pinckney, irritated by the manner of the other, "inside and out, and one can"t say the same for every one."
Frances looked at him.
"Do you know what Silas Grangerson asked me to-night?" she said.
"No."
"He asked me were you engaged to her."
"Phyl?"
"Miss Berknowles. I don"t know her well enough to call her Phyl."
"He asked you that?"
"Yes, said every one was talking of it, and the last time he saw you together you looked like an engaged couple the way you were carrying on."
"But he has never seen us together," cried the outraged Pinckney; "that was a pure lie."
"I expect he saw you when you didn"t see him; anyhow, that"s the impression people have got, and it"s not very pleasant for me."
Richard Pinckney choked back his anger. He fell to thinking where Silas could have seen them together.
"I don"t know whether he saw us or not," said he, "but I am certain of one thing; he never saw us "carrying on" as you call it; anyhow, I"ll have a personal explanation from Silas to-morrow."
"_Please_ don"t imagine that I object to your flirting with any one you like," said Frances with exasperating calm. "If you have a taste for that sort of thing it is your own business."
Pinckney flushed.
"I don"t know if you _want_ to quarrel with me," said he, "if you do, say so at once."
"Not a bit," she replied, "you know I never quarrel with any one, it"s bad form for one thing and it is waste of energy for another."
A man came up to claim her for the next dance and she went off with him, leaving Pinckney upset and astonished at her manner and conduct.
It was their first quarrel, the first result of their engagement. Frances had seemed all laziness and honey up to this; like many another woman she began to show her real nature now that Pinckney was secured.
But it was not an ordinary lovers" quarrel; her anger had less to do with Richard Pinckney than with Phyl. Her hatred of Phyl, big as a baobab tree, covered with its shadow Vernons, Miss Pinckney, and Richard.
He was part of the business of her dethronement.
Richard wandered off to where Maria Pinckney was seated watching the dancers.
"Why aren"t you dancing?" asked she.
"Oh, I don"t know," he replied. "I"m not keen on it and there are loads of men."
Miss Pinckney had watched him talking to Frances Rhett and she had drawn her own deductions, but she said nothing. He sat down beside her. He had been wanting to tell her of his engagement for a long time past, but had put it off and put it off, waiting for the psychological moment. Maria Pinckney was a very difficult person to fit into a psychological moment.
"I want to tell you something," said he. "I"m engaged to Frances Rhett."
"Engaged to be married to her?"
"Yes."
Miss Pinckney was dumb.
What she had always dreaded had come to pa.s.s, then.
"You don"t congratulate me?"
"No," she replied. "I don"t."
Then, all of a sudden, she turned on him.
"Congratulate you! If I saw you drowning in the harbour, would you expect me to stand at the Battery waving my hand to you and congratulating you?
No, I don"t congratulate you. You had the chance of being happy with the most beautiful girl in the world, and the best, and you"ve thrown it away to pick up with _that_ woman. Phyl would have married you, I know it, she would have made you happy, I know it, for I know her and I know you. Now it"s all spoiled."
He rose to his feet. It was the first time in his life that he had seen Maria Pinckney really put out.
"I"ll talk to you again about it," said he. Then he moved away.
He had the pleasure of watching Frances dancing the next waltz with Silas Grangerson, and Silas had the pleasure of watching him as he stood talking to one of the elderly ladies and looking on.
Silas"s rabbit trap was in reality a very simple affair, it was a plan to pick a quarrel with Richard through Frances, if possible; to make the imperturbable Pinckney angry, knowing well how easily an angry man can be induced to make a fool of himself. To keep cool and let Richard do the shouting.
Unfortunately for Silas, the sight of Phyl in all her beauty had raised his temperature far above the point of coolness. There were moments when he was dancing, when he could have flung Frances aside, torn Phyl from the arms of her partner and made off with her through the open window.
This dance was a deadly business for him. It was the one thing needed to cap and complete the strange fascination this girl exercised upon his mind, his imagination, his body. It was only now that he realised that nothing else at all mattered in the world, it was only now that he determined to have her or die.
Silas was of the type that kills under pa.s.sion, the type that, unable to have, destroys.
Preparing a trap for another, he himself had walked into a trap constructed by the devil, stronger than steel.
Yet he never once approached or tried to speak to Phyl. He fed on her at a distance. Fleeting glimpses of the curves of her figure, the t.i.tian red of her hair, the face that to-night might have turned a saint from his vows, were s.n.a.t.c.hed by him and devoured. He would not have danced with her if he could. To take her in his arms would have meant covering her face with kisses. Nor did he feel the least anger against the men with whom she danced. All that was a sham and an unreality, they were shadows. He and Phyl were the only real persons in that room.
Later on in the evening, Richard Pinckney, tired with the lights and the noise, took a stroll in the garden.
The garden was lit here and there with fairy lamps and there were coigns of shadow where couples were sitting out chatting and enjoying the beauty of the night.