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Title: Love in Idleness: A Bar Harbour Tale

Author: F. Marion Crawford

Release date: June 9, 2020 [eBook #62363]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE IN IDLENESS: A BAR HARBOUR TALE ***




Produced by Al Haines








  LOVE IN IDLENESS

  A Bar Harbour Tale


  BY

  F. MARION CRAWFORD

  AUTHOR OF "MR. ISAACS," "SARACINESCA,"
  "KATHARINE LAUDERDALE," ETC


  New York
  MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
  AND LONDON
  1894

  All rights reserved





  COPYRIGHT, 1894,
  BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.


  Norwood Press:
  J. S. Cushing & Co. -- Berwick & Smith
  Boston, Mass., U.S.A.





LOVE IN IDLENESS.


CHAPTER I.

"I'm going to stay with the three Miss Miners at the Trehearnes'
place," said Louis Lawrence, looking down into the blue water as he
leaned over the rail of the _Sappho_, on the sunny side of the
steamer.  "They're taking care of Miss Trehearne while her mother is
away at Karlsbad with Mr. Trehearne," he added, in further
explanation.

"Yes," answered Professor Knowles, his companion.  "Yes," he repeated
vaguely, a moment later.

"It's fun for the three Miss Miners, having such a place all to
themselves for the summer," continued young Lawrence.  "It's less
amusing for Miss Trehearne, I daresay.  I suppose I'm asked to
enliven things.  It can't be exactly gay in their establishment."

"I don't know any of them," observed the Professor, who was a Boston
man.  "The probability is that I never shall.  Who are the three Miss
Miners, and who is Miss Trehearne?"

"Oh--you don't know them!"  Lawrence's voice expressed his surprise
that there should be any one who did not know the ladies in question.
"Well--they're three old maids, you know."

"Excuse me, I don't know.  Old maid is such a vague term.  How old
must a maid be, to be an old maid?"

"Oh--it isn't age that makes old maids.  It's the absence of youth.
They're born so."

"A pleasing paradox," remarked the Professor, his exaggerated jaw
seeming to check the uneasy smile, as it attacked the gravity of his
colourless thin lips.

His head, in the full face view, was not too large for his body,
which, in the two dimensions of length and breadth, was well
proportioned.  The absence of the third dimension, that is, of bodily
thickness, was very apparent when he was seen sideways, while the
exaggeration of the skull was also noticeable only in profile.  The
forehead and the long delicate jaw were unnaturally prominent; the
ear was set much too far back, and there was no development over the
eyes, while the nose was small, thin, and sharp, as though cut out of
letter paper.

"It's not a paradox," said Lawrence, whose respect for professorial
statements was small.  "The three Miss Miners were old maids before
they were born.  They're not particularly old, except Cordelia.  She
must be over forty.  Augusta is the youngest--about thirty-two, I
should think.  Then there's the middle one--she's Elizabeth, you
know--she's no particular age.  Cordelia must have been pretty--in a
former state.  Lots of brown hair and beautiful teeth.  But she has
the religious smile--what they put on when they sing hymns, don't you
know?  It's chronic.  Good teeth and resignation did it.  She's good
all through, but you get all through her so soon!  Elizabeth's
clever--comparatively.  She's brown, and round, and fat, and ugly.
I'd like to paint her portrait.  She's really by far the most
attractive.  As for Augusta--"

"Well?  What about Augusta?" enquired the Professor, as Lawrence
paused.

"Oh--she's awful!  She's the accomplished one."

"I thought you said that the middle one--what's her name?--was the
cleverest."

"Yes, but cleverness never goes with what they call accomplishments,"
answered the young man.  "I've heard of great men playing the flute,
but I never heard of anybody who was 'musical' and came to
anything--especially women.  Fancy Cleopatra playing the piano--or
Catherine the Great painting a salad of wild flowers on a fan!  Can
you?  Or Semiramis sketching a lap dog on a cushion!"

"What very strange ideas you have!" observed the Professor, gravely.

Lawrence did not say anything in reply, but looked out over the blue
water at the dark green islands of the deep bay as the _Sappho_
paddled along, beating up a wake of egg-white froth.  He was glad
that Professor Knowles was going over to the other side to dwell
amongst the placid inhabitants of North East Harbour, where the joke
dieth not, even at an advanced age; where there are people who
believe in Ruskin and swear by Herbert Spencer, who coin words ending
in 'ism,' and intellectually subsist on the 'ologies' with the
notable exception of theology.  Lawrence had once sat at the
Professor's feet, at Harvard, unwillingly, indeed, but not without
indirect profit.  They had met to-day in the train, and it was not
probable that they should meet again in the course of the summer,
unless they particularly sought one another's society.

They had nothing in common.  Lawrence was an artist, or intended to
be one, and had recently returned from abroad, after spending three
years in Paris.  By parentage he belonged to New York.  He had been
christened Louis because his mother was of French extraction and had
an uncle of that name, who might be expected to do something handsome
for her son.  Louis Lawrence was now about five and twenty years of
age, was possessed of considerable talent, and of no particular
worldly goods.  His most important and valuable possession, indeed,
was his character, which showed itself in all he said and did.

There is something problematic about the existence of a young artist
who is in earnest, which alone is an attraction in the eyes of women.
The odds are ten to one, of course, that he will never accomplish
anything above the average, but that one-tenth chance is not to be
despised, for it is the possibility of a well-earned celebrity,
perhaps of greatness.  The one last step, out of obscurity into fame,
is generally the only one of which the public knows anything, sees
anything, or understands anything; and no one can tell when, if ever,
that one step may be taken.  There is a constant interest in
expecting it, and in knowing of its possibility, which lends the
artist's life a real charm in his own eyes and the eyes of others.
And very often it turns out that the charm is all the life has to
recommend it.

The young man who had just given Professor Knowles an account of his
hostesses was naturally inclined to be communicative, which is a
weakness, though he was also frank, which is a virtue.  He was a very
slim young man, and might have been thought to be in delicate health,
for he was pale and thin in the face.  The features were long and
finely chiselled, and the complexion was decidedly dark.  He would
have looked well in a lace ruffle, with flowing curls.  But his hair
was short, and he wore rough grey clothes and an unobtrusive tie.
The highly arched black eyebrows gave his expression strength, but
the very minute, dark mustache which shaded the upper lip was a
little too evidently twisted and trained.  That was the only outward
sign of personal vanity, however, and was not an offensive one,
though it gave him a foreign air which Professor Knowles disliked,
but which the three Miss Miners thought charming.  His manner pleased
them, too; for he was always just as civil to them as though they had
been young and pretty and amusing, which is more than can be said of
the majority of modern youths.  His conversation occasionally shocked
them, it is true; but the shock was a mild one and agreeably applied,
so that they were willing to undergo it frequently.

Lawrence was not thinking of the Miss Miners as he watched the dark
green islands.  If he had thought of them at all during the last
half-hour, it had been with a certain undefined gratitude to them for
being the means of allowing him to spend a fortnight in the society
of Fanny Trehearne.

Professor Knowles had not moved from his side during the long
silence.  Lawrence looked up and saw that he was still there, his
extraordinary profile cut out against the cloudless sky.

"Will you smoke?" inquired Lawrence, offering him a cigarette.

"No, thank you--certainly not cigarettes," answered the Professor,
with a superior air.  "You were telling me all about the Miss
Miners," he continued; for though he knew none of them, he was of a
curious disposition.  "You spoke of a Miss Trehearne, I think."

"Yes," answered the young man.  "Do you know her?"

"Oh, no.  It's an unusual name, that's all.  Are they New York
people?"

Lawrence smiled at the idea that any one should ask such a question.

"Yes, of course," he answered.  "New York--since the Flood."

"And Miss Trehearne is the only daughter?" enquired the Professor,
inquisitively.

"She has a brother--Randolph," replied Lawrence, rather shortly; for
he was suddenly aware that there was no particular reason why he
should talk about the Trehearnes.

"Of course, they're relations of the Miners," observed the Professor.

"That's the reason why Miss Trehearne has them to stay with her.
Excuse me--I can't get a light in this wind."

Thereupon Lawrence turned away and got under the lee of the deck
saloon, leaving the Professor to himself.  Having lighted his
cigarette, the artist went forward and stood in the sharp head-breeze
that seemed to blow through and through him, disinfecting his whole
being from the hot, close air of the train he had left half an hour
earlier.

Bar Harbour, in common speech, includes Frenchman's Bay, the island
of Mount Desert, and the other small islands lying near it,--an
extensive tract of land and sea.  As a matter of fact, the name
belongs to the little harbour between Bar Island and Mount Desert,
together with the village which has grown to be the centre of
civilization, since the whole place has become fashionable.  Earth,
sky, and water are of the north,--hard, bright, and cold.  In
artists' slang, there is no atmosphere.  The dark green islands, as
one looks at them, seem to be almost before the foreground.  The
picture is beautiful, and some people call it grand; but it lacks
depth.  There is something fiercely successful about the colour of
it, something brilliantly self-reliant.  It suggests a certain type
of handsome woman--of the kind that need neither repentance nor
cosmetics, and are perfectly sure of the fact, whose virtue is too
cold to be kind, and whose complexion is not shadowed by passion, nor
softened by suffering, nor even washed pale with tears.  Only the sea
is eloquent.  The deep-breathing tide runs forward to the feet of the
over-perfect, heartless earth, to linger and plead love's story while
he may; then sighing sadly, sweeps back unsatisfied, baring his
desolate bosom to her loveless scorn.

The village, the chief centre, lies by the water's edge, facing the
islands which enclose the natural harbour.  It was and is a fishing
village, like many another on the coast.  In the midst of it, vast
wooden hotels, four times as high as the houses nearest to them, have
sprung up to lodge fashion in six-storied discomfort.  The effect is
astonishing; for the blatant architect, gesticulating in soft wood
and ranting in paint, as it were, has sketched an evil dream of
mediævalism, incoherent with itself and with the very common-place
facts of the village street.  There, also, in Mr. Bee's shop window,
are plainly visible the more or less startling covers of the newest
books, while from on high frowns down the counterfeit presentment of
battlements and turrets, and of such terrors as lent like interest
when novels were not, neither was the slightest idea of the short
story yet conceived.

But behind all and above all rise the wooded hills, which are neither
modern nor ancient, but eternal.  And in them and through them there
is secret sweetness, and fragrance, and much that is gentle and
lovely--in the heart of the defiantly beautiful earth-woman with her
cold face, far beyond the reach of her tide-lover, and altogether out
of hearing of his sighs and complaining speeches.  There grow in
endless greenness the white pines and the pitch pines, the black
spruce and the white; there droops the feathery larch by the creeping
yew, and there gleam the birches, yellow, white, and grey; the sturdy
red oak spreads his arms to the scarlet maple, and the witch hazel
rustles softly in the mysterious forest breeze.  There, buried in the
wood's bosom, bloom and blossom the wild flowers, and redden the
blushing berries in unseen succession, from middle June to late
September--violets first, and wild iris, strawberries and
raspberries, blueberries and blackberries; short-lived wild roses and
tender little blue-bells, red lilies, goldenrod and clematis, in the
confusion of nature's loveliest order.

All this Lawrence knew, and remembered, guessing at what he could
neither remember nor know, with an artist's facility for filling up
the unfinished sketch left on the mind by one impression.  He had
been at Bar Harbour three years earlier, and had wandered amongst the
woods and pottered along the shore in a skiff.  But he had been alone
then and had stopped in the mediæval hotel, a rather solitary,
thinking unit amidst the horde of thoughtless summer nomads,
designated by the clerk at the desk as 'Number a hundred and
twenty-three,' and a candidate for a daily portion of the
questionable dinner at the hotel table.  It was to be different this
time, he thought, as he watched for the first sight of the pier when
the _Sappho_ rounded Bar Island.  The Trehearnes had not been at
their house three years ago, and Fanny Trehearne had been then not
quite sixteen, just groping her way from the schoolroom to the world,
and quite beneath his young importance--even had she been at Bar
Harbour to wander among the woods with him.  Things had changed, now.
He was not quite sure that in her girlish heart she did not consider
him beneath her notice.  She was straight and tall--almost as tall as
he, and she was proud, if she was not pretty, and she carried her
head as high as the handsomest.  Moreover, she was rich, and Louis
Lawrence was at present phenomenally poor, with a rather distant
chance of inheriting money.  These were some of the excellent reasons
why fate had made him fall in love with her, though none of them
accounted for the fact that she had encouraged him, and had suggested
to the Miss Miners that it would be very pleasant to have him come
and stay a fortnight in July.

The _Sappho_ slowed down, stopped, backed, and made fast to the
wooden pier, and as she swung round, Lawrence saw Fanny Trehearne
standing a little apart from the group of people who had come down to
meet their own friends or to watch other people meeting theirs.  The
young girl was evidently looking for him, and he took off his hat and
waved it about erratically to attract her attention.  When she saw
him, she nodded with a faint smile and moved one step nearer to the
gangway, to wait until he should come on shore with the crowd.

She had a quiet, business-like way of moving, as though she never
changed her position without a purpose.  As Lawrence came along,
trying to gain on the stream of passengers with whom he was moving,
he kept his eyes fixed on her face, wondering whether the expression
would change when he reached her and took her hand.  When the moment
came, the change was very slight.

"I like you--you're punctual," she said.  "Come along!"

"I've got some traps, you know," he answered, hesitating.

"Well--there's the expressman.  Give him your checks."




CHAPTER II.

"They've all gone out in Mr. Brown's cat-boat--so I came alone,"
observed Miss Trehearne, when the expressman had been interviewed.

"Who are 'all'?" asked Lawrence.  "Just the three Miss Miners?"

"Yes.  Just the three Miss Miners."

"I thought you might have somebody stopping with you."

"No.  Nobody but you.  Why do you say 'stopping' instead of
'staying'?  I don't like it."

"Then I won't say it again," answered Lawrence, meekly.  "Why do you
object to it, though?"

"You're not an Englishman, so there's no reason why you shouldn't
speak English.  Here's the buckboard.  Can you drive?"

"Oh--well--yes," replied the young man, rather doubtfully, and
looking at the smart little turn-out.

Fanny Trehearne fixed her cool grey eyes on his face with a critical
expression.

"Can you ride?" she asked, pursuing her examination.

"Oh, yes--that is--to some extent.  I'm not exactly a circus-rider,
you know--but I can get on."

"Most people can do that.  The important thing is not to come off.
What can you do--anyway?  Are you a good man in a boat?  You see I've
only met you in society.  I've never seen you do anything."

"No," answered Lawrence.  "I'm not a good man in a boat, as you call
it--except that I'm never sea-sick.  I don't know anything about
boats, if you mean sail-boats.  I can row a little--that's all."

"If you could 'row' as you call it, you'd say you could 'pull an
oar'--you wouldn't talk about 'rowing.'  Well, get in, and I'll
drive."

There was not the least scorn in her manner, at his inability to do
all those things which are to be done at Bar Harbour if people do
anything at all.  She had simply ascertained the fact as a measure of
safety.  It was not easy to guess whether she despised him for his
lack of skill or not, but he was inclined to think that she did, and
he made up his mind that he would get up very early, and engage a
sailor to go out with him and teach him something about boats.  The
resolution was half unconscious, for he was really thinking more of
her than of himself just then.  To tell the truth, he did not attach
so much importance to any of the things she had mentioned as to feel
greatly humiliated by his own ignorance.

"After all," said Miss Trehearne, as Lawrence took his seat beside
her, "it doesn't matter.  And it's far better to be frank, and say at
once that you don't know, than to pretend that you do, and then try
to steer and drown one, or to drive and then break my neck.  Only one
rather wonders where you were brought up, you know."

"Oh--I was brought up somehow," answered Lawrence, vaguely.  "I don't
exactly remember."

"It doesn't matter," returned his companion, in a reassuring tone.

"No.  If you don't mind, I don't."

Fanny Trehearne laughed a little, without looking at him, for she was
intent upon what she was doing.  It was a part of her nature to fix
her attention upon whatever she had in hand--a fact which must
account for a certain indifference in what she said.  Just then, too,
she was crossing the main street of the village, and there were other
vehicles moving about hither and thither.  More than once she nodded
to an acquaintance, whom Lawrence also recognized.

"It's much more civilized than it was when I was here last," observed
Lawrence.  "There are lots of people one knows."

"Much too civilized," answered the young girl.  "I'm beginning to
hate it."

"I thought you liked society--"

"I?  What made you think so?"

This sort of question is often extremely embarrassing.  Lawrence
looked at her thoughtfully, and wished that he had not made his
innocent remark, since he was called upon to explain it.

"I don't know," he replied at last.  "Somehow, I always associate you
with society, and dancing, and that sort of thing."

"Do you?  It's very unjust."

"Well--it's not exactly a crime to like society, is it?  Why are you
so angry?"

"I wish you wouldn't exaggerate!  It does not follow that I'm angry
because you're not fair to me."

"I didn't mean to be unfair.  How you take one up!"

"Really, Mr. Lawrence--I think it's you who are doing that!"

Miss Trehearne, having a stretch of clear road before her, gave her
pair their heads for a moment, and the light buckboard dashed briskly
up the gentle ascent.  Lawrence was watching her, though she did not
look at him, and he thought he saw the colour deepen in her sunburnt
cheek, although her grey eyes were as cool as ever.  She was
certainly not pretty, according to the probable average judgment of
younger men.  Lawrence, himself, who was an artist, wondered what he
saw in her face to attract him, since he could not deny the
attraction, and could not attribute it altogether to expression nor
to the indirect effect of her character acting upon his imagination.
He did not like to believe, either, that the charm was fictitious,
and lay in a certain air of superior smartness, the result of good
taste and plenty of money.  Anybody could wear serge, and a more or
less nautical hat and gloves, just in the fashionable degree of
looseness or tightness, as the case might be.  Anybody who chose had
the right to turn up a veil over the brim of the aforesaid hat, and
anybody who did so stood a good chance of being sunburnt.  Moreover,
as Lawrence well knew, there is a quality of healthy complexion which
tans to a golden brown, very becoming when the grey eyes have dark
lashes, but less so when, as in Fanny Trehearne's case, the lashes
and brows are much lighter than the hair--almost white, in fact.  It
is not certain whether the majority of human noses turn up or down.
There was, however, no doubt but that Fanny's turned up.  It was also
apparent that she had decidedly high cheek bones, a square jaw, and a
large mouth, with lips much too even and too little curved for
beauty.  After all, her best points were perhaps her eyes, her
golden-brown complexion, and her crisp, reddish brown hair, which
twisted itself into sharp little curls wherever it was not long
enough to be smoothed.  With a little more regularity of feature,
Fanny Trehearne might have been called a milkmaid beauty, so far as
her face was concerned.  Fortunately for her, her looks were above or
below such faint praise.  It was doubtful whether she would be said
to have charm, but she had individuality, since those terms are in
common use to express gifts which escape definition.

A short silence followed her somewhat indignant speech.  Then, the
road being still clear before her, she turned and looked at Lawrence.
It was not a mere glance of enquiry, it was certainly not a tender
glance, but her eyes lingered with his for a moment.

"Look here--are we going to quarrel?" she asked.

"Is there any reason why we should?" Lawrence smiled.

"Not if we agree," answered the young girl, gravely, as she turned
her head from him again.

"That means that we shan't quarrel if I agree with you, I suppose,"
observed the young man.

"Well, why shouldn't you?" asked Fanny, frankly.  "You may just as
well, you know.  You will in the end."

"By Jove!  You seem pretty sure of that!" Lawrence laughed.

Fanny said nothing in reply, but shortened the reins as the horses
reached the top of the hill.  Lawrence looked down towards the sea.
The sun was very low, and the water was turning from sapphire to
amaranth, while the dark islands gathered gold into their green
depths.

"How beautiful it is!" exclaimed the artist, not exactly from
impulse, though in real enjoyment, while consciously hoping that his
companion would say something pleasant.

"Of course it's beautiful," she answered.  "That's why I come here."

"I should put it in the opposite way," said Lawrence.

"How?"

"Why--it's beautiful because you come here."

"Oh--that's ingenious!  You think it's my mission to beautify
landscapes."

"I thought that if I said something pretty in the way of a
compliment, we shouldn't go on quarrelling."

"Oh!  Were we quarrelling?  I hadn't noticed it."

"You said something about it a moment ago," observed Lawrence, mildly.

"Did I?  You're an awfully literal person.  By the bye, you know all
the Miss Miners, don't you?  I've forgotten."

"I believe I do.  There's Miss Miner the elder--to begin with--"

"The oldest--since there are three," said Fanny, correcting him.
"Yes--she's the one with the hair--and teeth."

"Yes, and Miss Elizabeth--isn't that her name?  The plainest--"

"And the nicest.  And Augusta--she's the third.  Paints wild flowers
and plays the piano.  She's about my age, I believe."

"Your age!  Why, she must be over thirty!"

"No.  She's nineteen, still.  She's got an anchor out to
windward--against the storm of time, you know.  She swings a little
with the tide, though."

"I don't understand," said Lawrence, to whom nautical language was
incomprehensible.

"Never mind.  I only mean that she does not want to grow old.  It's
always funny to see a person of nineteen who's really over thirty."

Lawrence laughed a little.

"You're fond of them all, aren't you?" he asked, presently.

"Of course!  They're my relations--how could I help being fond of
them?"

"Oh--yes," answered Lawrence, vaguely.  "But they really are very
nice--people."

"Why do you hesitate?"

"I don't know.  I couldn't say 'very nice ladies,' could I?  And I
shouldn't exactly say 'very nice women'--and 'very nice people'
sounds queer, somehow, doesn't it?"

"And you wouldn't say 'very nice old maids'--"

"Certainly not!"

"No.  It wouldn't be civil to me, nor kind to them.  The truth is
generally unkind and usually rude.  Besides, they love you."

"Me?"

"Yes.  They rave about you, and your looks, and your manners, and
your conversation, and your talents."

"The Dickens!  I'm flattered!  But it's always the wrong people who
like one."

"Why the wrong people?" asked Fanny Trehearne, not looking at him.

"Because all the liking in the world from people one doesn't care for
can't make up for the not liking of the one person one does care for."

"Oh--in that way.  It's rash to care for only one person.  It's
putting all one's eggs into one basket."

"What an extraordinary sentiment!"

"I didn't mean it for sentiment."

"No--I should think not!  Quite the contrary, I should say."

"Quite," affirmed Fanny, gravely.

"Quite?"

"Yes--almost quite."

"Oh--'almost' quite?"

"It's the same thing."

"Not to me."

The young girl would not turn her attention from her horses, though
in Lawrence's inexpert opinion she could have done so with perfect
safety just then, and without impropriety.  The most natural and
innocent curiosity should have prompted her to look into his eyes for
a moment, if only to see whether he were in earnest or not.  He would
certainly not have thought her a flirt if she had glanced kindly at
him.  But she looked resolutely at the horses' heads.

"Here we are!" she exclaimed suddenly.

With a sharp turn to the left the buckboard swept through the open
gate, the off horse breaking into a canter which Fanny instantly
checked.  The near wheels passed within a foot of the gatepost.

"Wasn't that rather close?" asked Lawrence.

"Why?  There was lots of room.  Are you nervous?"

"I suppose I am, since you say so."

"I didn't say so.  I asked."

"And I answered," said Lawrence, tartly.

"How sensitive you are!  You act as though I had called you a coward."

"I thought you meant to.  It sounded rather like it."

"You have no right to think that I mean things which I haven't said,"
answered the young girl.

"Oh, very well.  I apologize for thinking that what you said meant
anything."

"Don't lose your temper--don't be a spoilt baby!"

Lawrence said nothing, and they reached the house in silence.  Fanny
was not mistaken in calling him sensitive, though he was by no means
so nervous, perhaps, as she seemed ready to believe.  She had a harsh
way of saying things which, spoken with a smile, could not have given
offence, and Lawrence was apt to attach real importance to her
careless speeches.  He felt himself out of his element from the
first, in a place where he might be expected to do things in which he
could not but show an awkward inexperience, and he was ready to
resent anything like the suggestion that timidity was at the root of
his ignorance, or was even its natural result.

His face was unnecessarily grave as he held out his hand to help
Fanny down from the buckboard, and she neither touched it nor looked
at him as she sprang to the ground.

"Go into the library, and we'll have tea," she said, without turning
her head, as she entered the house before him.  "I'll be down in a
moment."

She pointed carelessly to the open door and went through the hall in
the direction of the staircase.  Lawrence entered the room alone.

The house was very large; for the Trehearnes were rich people, and
liked to have their friends with them in considerable numbers.
Moreover, they had bought land in Bar Harbour in days when it had
been cheap, and had built their dwelling commodiously, in the midst
of a big lot which ran down from the road to the sea.  With the
instinct of a man who has been obliged to live in New York, squeezed
in, as it were, between tall houses on each side, Mr. Trehearne had
given himself the luxury, in Bar Harbour, of a house as wide and as
deep as he could possibly desire, and only two stories high.

The library was in the southwest corner of the house, opening on the
south side upon a deep verandah from which wooden steps descended to
the shrubbery, and having windows to the west, which overlooked the
broad lawn.  The latter was enclosed by tall trees.  The winding
avenue led in a northerly direction to the main road.  At the east
end of the house, the offices ran out towards the boundary of the
Trehearnes' land, and beyond them, among the trees, there was a small
yard enclosed by a lattice of wood eight or ten feet high.

The library was the principal room on the ground floor, and was
really larger than the drawing-room which followed it along the line
of the south verandah, though it seemed smaller from being more
crowded with furniture.  As generally happens in the country, it had
become a sort of common room in which everybody preferred to sit.
The drawing-room had been almost abandoned of late, the three Miss
Miners being sociable beings, unaccustomed to magnificence in their
own homes, and averse to being alone with it anywhere.  They felt
that the drawing-room was too fine for them, and by tacit consent
they chose the library for their general trysting-place and tea camp
when they were indoors.  Mrs. Trehearne, who was, perhaps, a little
too fond of splendour, would have smiled at the idea as she thought
of her gorgeously brocaded reception rooms in New York; but Fanny had
simple tastes, like her father, and agreed with her old-maid cousins
in preferring the plain, dark woodwork, the comfortable leathern
chairs, and the backs of the books, to the dreary wilderness of
expensive rugs and unnecessary gilding which lay beyond.  For the
sake of coolness, the doors were usually opened between the rooms.




CHAPTER III.

The weather was warm.  By contrast with the cool air of the bay he
had lately crossed, it seemed hot to Lawrence when he entered the
library.  Barely glancing at the room, he went straight to one of the
doors which opened upon the verandah, and going out, sat down
discontentedly in a big cushioned straw chair.  It was very warm, and
it seemed suddenly very still.  In the distance he could hear the
wheels of the buckboard in the avenue, as the groom took it round to
the stables, and out of the close shrubbery he caught the sharp, dry
sound of footsteps rapidly retreating along a concealed cinder path.
The air scarcely stirred the creeper which climbed up one of the
pillars of the verandah and festooned its way, curtain-like, in both
directions to the opposite ends.  On his right he could see the
broad, sloping lawn, all shadowed now by the tall trees beyond.
Without looking directly at it, he felt that the vivid green of the
grass was softened and that there must be gold in the tops of the
trees.  The sensation was restful, but his eyes stared vacantly at
the deep shrubbery which began at the foot of the verandah steps and
stretched away under the spruces at his left.

He was exceedingly discontented, though he had just arrived, or,
perhaps, for that very reason among many other minor ones.  He had
never had any cause to expect from Fanny Trehearne anything in the
way of sentiment, but he was none the less persuaded that he had a
moral right to look for something more than chaff and good-natured
hospitality, spiced with such vigorous reproof as "don't be a spoilt
baby."

The words rankled.  He was asking himself just then whether he was a
"spoilt baby" or not.  It was of great importance to him to know the
truth.  If he was a spoilt baby, of course Miss Trehearne had a right
to say so if she liked, though the expression was not complimentary.
But if not, she was monstrously unjust.  He did not deny that the
accusation might be well founded; for he was modest as well as
sensitive, and did not think very highly of himself at present,
though he hoped great things for the future, and believed that he was
to be a famous artist.

The more he told himself that he had no right to expect anything of
Fanny, the more thoroughly convinced he became that his right
existed, and that she was trampling upon it.  She had ordered him
into the library in a very peremptory and high-and-mighty fashion to
wait for her, regardless of the fact that he had travelled
twenty-four hours, and had acquired the prerogative right of the
traveller to soap and water before all else.  No doubt he was quite
presentable, since the conditions of modern railways had made it
possible to come in clean, or comparatively so, from a longish run.
But the ancient traditions ought not to be swept out of the way,
Louis thought, and the right of scrubbing subsisted still.  She might
at least have given him a hint as to the whereabouts of his room,
since she had left him to himself for a quarter of an hour.  She had
not been gone four minutes yet, but Louis made it fifteen, and
fifteen it was to be, in his estimation.

Presently he heard a man's footstep in the library behind him, and
the subdued tinkling of a superior tea-service, of which the sound
differs from the clatter of the hotel tea-tray, as the voice, say, of
Fanny Trehearne differed in refinement from that of an Irish cook.
But it irritated Lawrence, nevertheless, and he did not look round.
He felt that when Fanny came down again, he intended to refuse tea
altogether--presumably, by way of proving that he was not a spoilt
baby after all.  He crossed one leg over the other impatiently, and
hesitated as to whether, if he lit a cigarette, it would seem rude to
be smoking when Fanny should come, even though he was really in the
open air on the verandah.  But in this, his manners had the better of
his impatience, and after touching his cigarette case in his pocket,
in a longing way, he did not take it out.

At last he heard Fanny enter the room.  There was no mistaking her
tread, for he had noticed that she wore tennis shoes.  He knew that
she could not see him where he sat, and he turned his head towards
the door expectantly.  Again he heard the tinkle of the tea-things.
Then there was silence.  Then the urn began to hiss and sing softly,
and there was another sort of tinkling.  It was clear that Fanny had
sat down.  She could have no idea that he was sitting outside, as he
knew, but he thought she might have taken the trouble to look for
him.  He listened intently for the sound of her step again, but it
did not come, and, oddly enough, his heart began to beat more
quickly.  But he did not move.  He felt a ridiculous determination to
wait until she began to be impatient and to move about and look for
him.  He could not have told whether it were timidity, or
nervousness, or ill-temper which kept him nailed to his chair, and
just then he would have scorned the idea that it could be love in any
shape, though his heart was beating so fast.

Suddenly his straining ear caught the soft rustle made by the pages
of a book, turned deliberately and smoothed afterwards.  She was
calmly reading, indifferent to his coming or staying away--reading
while the tea was drawing.  How stolid she was, he thought.  She was
certainly not conscious of the action of her heart as she sat there.
For a few moments longer he did not move.  Then he felt he wished to
see her, to see how she was sitting, and how really indifferent she
was.  But if he made a sound, she would look up and lay down her book
even before he entered the room.  The verandah had a floor of painted
boards,--which are more noisy than unpainted ones, for some occult
reason,--and he could not stir a step without being heard.  Besides,
his straw easy-chair would creak when he rose.

All at once he felt how very foolish he was, and he got up noisily,
an angry blush on his young face.  He reached the entrance in two
strides and stood in the open doorway, with his back to the light.
As he had guessed, Fanny was reading.

"Oh!" he ejaculated with affected surprise, as he looked at her.

She did not raise her eyes nor start, being evidently intent upon
finishing the sentence she had begun.

"I thought you were never coming," she said, absently.

He was more hurt than ever by her indifference, and sat down at a
little distance, without moving the light chair he had chosen.  Fanny
reached the foot of the page, put a letter she held into the place,
closed the book upon it, and then at last looked up.

"Do you like your tea strong or weak?" she enquired in a
business-like tone.

"Just as it comes--I don't care," answered Lawrence, gloomily.

"Then I'll give it to you now.  I like mine strong."

"It's bad for the nerves."

"I haven't any nerves," said Fanny Trehearne, with conviction.

"That's curious," observed Lawrence, with fine sarcasm.

Fanny looked at him without smiling, since there was nothing to smile
at, and then poured out his tea.  He took it in silence, but helped
himself to more sugar, with a reproachful air.

"Oh--you like it sweet, do you?" said Fanny, interrogatively.

"Peculiarity of spoilt babies," answered Lawrence, in bitter tones.

"Yes, I see it is."

And with this crushing retort Fanny Trehearne relapsed into silence.
Lawrence began to drink his tea, burnt his mouth with courageous
indifference, stirred up the sugar gravely, and said nothing.

"I wonder when they'll get home," said Fanny, after a long interval.

"Are you anxious about them?" enquired the young man, with affected
politeness.

"Anxious?  No!  I was only wondering."

"I'm not very amusing, I know," said Lawrence, grimly.

"No, you're not."

The blood rushed to his face again with his sudden irritation, and he
drank more hot tea to keep himself in countenance.  At that moment he
sincerely wished that he had not come to Bar Harbour at all.

"You're not particularly encouraging, Miss Trehearne," he said
presently.  "I'm sure, I'm doing my best to be agreeable."

"And you think that I'm doing my best to be disagreeable?  I'm not,
you know.  It's your imagination."

"I don't know," answered Lawrence, his face unbending a little.  "You
began by telling me that you despised me because I'm such a duffer at
out-of-door things, then you told me I was a spoilt baby, and now
you're proving to me that I'm a bore."

"Duffer, baby, and bore!" Fanny laughed.  "What an appalling
combination!"

"It is, indeed.  But that's what you said--"

"Oh, nonsense!  I wasn't as rude as that, was I?  But I never said
anything of the sort, you know."

"You really did say that I was a spoilt baby--"

"No.  I told you not to be, by way of a general warning--"

"Well, it's the same thing--"

"Is it?  If I tell you not to go out of the room, for instance, and
if you sit still--is it the same thing as though you got up and went
out?"

"Why no--of course not!  How absurd!"

"Well, the other is absurd too."

"I'll never say again that women aren't logical," answered Lawrence,
smiling in spite of himself.

"No--don't.  Have some more tea."

"Thanks--I've not finished.  It's too hot to drink."

Thereupon, his good temper returning, he desisted from self-torture
by scalding, and set the cup down.  Fanny watched him, but turned her
eyes away as he looked up and she met his glance.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said quietly.  "I've looked forward to
it."

Perhaps she was a little the more ready to say so, because she was
inwardly conscious of having rather wilfully teased him, but she
meant what she said.  Lawrence felt his heart beating again in a
moment.  Resting his elbow on his knees, he clasped his hands and
looked down at the pattern of the rug under his feet.  She did not
realize how easily she could move him, not being by any means a flirt.

"It's nothing to the way I've looked forward to it," he answered.

She was silent, but he did not raise his head.  He could see her face
in the carpet.

"You know that, don't you?" he asked, in a low voice, after a few
moments.

Unfortunately for his information on the subject, the butler appeared
just then, announcing a visitor.

"Mr. Brinsley."

It was clear that the manservant had no option in the matter of
admitting the newcomer, who was in the room almost before his name
was pronounced.

"How do you do, Miss Trehearne?" he began as he came swiftly forward.
"I'm tremendously glad to find you at home.  You're generally out at
this hour."

"Is that why you chose it?" asked Fanny, with a little laugh and
holding out her hand.  "Do you know Mr. Lawrence?" she continued, by
way of introducing the two men.  "Mr. Brinsley," she added, for
Louis's benefit.

Lawrence had risen, and he shook hands with a good grace.  But he
hated Mr. Brinsley at once, both because the latter had come
inopportunely and because his own sensitive nature was instantly and
strongly repelled by the man.

There was no mistaking Mr. Brinsley's Canadian accent, though he
seemed anxious to make it as English as possible, and Lawrence
disliked Canadians; but that fact alone could not have produced the
strongly disagreeable sensation of which the younger man was at once
conscious, and he looked at the visitor in something like surprise at
the strength of his instantaneous aversion.  Brinsley, though dressed
quietly, and with irreproachable correctness, was a showy man, of
medium height, but magnificently made.  His wrists were slender,
nervous, and sinewy, his ankles--displayed to advantage by his low
russet shoes--were beautifully modelled, whereas his shoulders were
almost abnormally broad, and the cords and veins moved visibly in his
athletic neck when he spoke or moved.  The powerful muscles were
apparent under his thin grey clothes, and Lawrence had noticed the
perfect grace and strength of his quick step when he had entered.  In
face he was very dark, and his wiry, short black hair had rusty
reflexions.  His skin was tanned to a deep brown, and mottled,
especially about the eyes, with deep shadows, in which were freckles
even darker than the shadows themselves.  His beard evidently grew as
high as his cheek bones, for the line from which it was shaved was
cleanly drawn and marked by the dark fringe remaining above.  His
mustache was black and heavy, and he wore very small, closely cropped
whiskers like those affected by naval officers.  He had one of those
arrogant, vain, astute noses which seem to point at whatever the
small and beady black eyes judge to be worth having.

At a glance, Lawrence saw that Brinsley was an athlete, and he
guessed instantly that the man must be good at all those things which
Louis himself was unable to do.  He was a man to ride, drive, run,
pull an oar, and beat everybody at tennis.  But neither was that the
reason why Lawrence hated him from the first.  It had been the touch
of his hard dry hand, perhaps, or the flash of the light in his small
black eyes, or his self-satisfied and all-conquering expression.  It
was not easy to say.  Possibly, too, Louis thought that Brinsley was
his rival, and resented the fact that Fanny had betrayed no annoyance
at the interruption.

But Brinsley barely vouchsafed Lawrence a glance, as the latter
thought, and immediately sat himself down much nearer to Miss
Trehearne and the tea-table than Louis, in his previous rage, had
thought fit to do.

"Well, Miss Trehearne," said Brinsley, "how is Tim?  Isn't he all
right yet?"

"He's better," answered Fanny.  "He had a bad time of it, but you
can't kill a wire-haired terrier, you know.  He wouldn't take the
phosphate.  I believe it was sweetened, and he hates sugar."

"So do I.  Please don't give me any," he added quickly, watching her
as she prepared a cup of tea for him.

Lawrence's resentment began to grow again.  It was doubtless because
Mr. Brinsley never took sugar that Fanny had seemed scornfully
surprised at the artist's weakness for it.




CHAPTER IV.

Louis Lawrence was exceedingly uncomfortable during the next few
minutes, and to add to his misery, he was quite conscious that he had
nothing to complain of.  It was natural that he should not know the
people in Bar Harbour, excepting those whom he had known before, and
that he should be in complete ignorance of all projected gaieties.
Of course no one had suggested to the Reveres, for instance, to ask
him to their dance; because they were Boston people, they did not
know him, and nobody was aware that he was within reach.  Besides,
Louis Lawrence was a very insignificant personage, though he was
well-connected, well-bred, and not ill-looking.  He was just now a
mere struggling artist, with no money except in the questionable
future, and if he had talent, it was problematical, since he had not
distinguished himself in any way as yet.

He remembered all these things, but they did not console him.  In
order not to seem rude, he made vague remarks from time to time, when
something occurred to him to say, but he inwardly wished Brinsley a
speedy departure and a fearful end.  Fanny seemed amused and
interested by the man's conversation, and she herself talked
fluently.  Now and then Brinsley looked at Lawrence, really surprised
by the latter's ignorance of everything in the nature of sport, and
possibly with a passing contempt which Lawrence noticed and proceeded
to exaggerate in importance.  The artist was on the point of asking
Fanny's permission to go and find the room allotted to him, when a
sound of women's voices, high and low, came through the open windows.
There was an audible little confusion in the hall, and the three Miss
Miners entered the library one after the other in quick succession.

"Oh, Mr. Brinsley!" exclaimed Miss Cordelia, the eldest, coming
forward with a pale smile which showed many of her very beautiful
teeth.

"Mr. Brinsley is here," said Miss Elizabeth, the ugly one, in an
undertone to Miss Augusta, who possessed the accomplishments.

Then they also advanced and shook hands with much cordiality, the
remains of which were promptly offered to Lawrence.  Mr. Brinsley did
not seem in the least overpowered by the sudden entrance of the three
old maids.  He smiled, moved up several chairs to the tea-table, and
laughed agreeably over each chair, though Lawrence could not see that
there was anything to laugh at.  Brinsley's vitality was tremendous,
and his manners were certainly very good, so that he was a useful
person in a drawing-room.  His assurance, if put to the test, would
have been found equal to most emergencies.  But on the present
occasion he had no need of it.  It was evidently his mission to be
worshipped by the three Miss Miners and to be liked by Miss
Trehearne, who did not like everybody.

"I'm sure we've missed the best part of your visit," said Miss
Cordelia.

"Oh no," answered Brinsley, promptly.  "I've only just come--at least
it seems so to me," he added, smiling at Fanny across the tea-table.

Lawrence thought he must have been in the room more than half an
hour, but the sisters were all delighted by the news that their idol
meant to stay some time longer.

"How nice it would be if everybody made such speeches!" sighed Miss
Augusta to Lawrence, who was next to her.  "Such a charming way of
making Fanny feel that she talks well!  I'm sure he's really been
here some time."

"He has," answered Lawrence, absently and without lowering his voice
enough, for Brinsley immediately glanced at him.

"We've been having such a pleasant talk about the dogs and horses,"
said the Canadian, willing to be disagreeable to the one other man
present.  "I'm afraid we've bored Mr. Lawrence to death, Miss
Trehearne--he doesn't seem to care for those things as much as we do."

"I don't know anything about them," answered the young man.

"I'm afraid you'll bore yourself in Bar Harbour, then," observed Mr.
Brinsley.  "What can you find to do all day long?"

"Nothing.  I'm an artist."

"Ah?  That's very nice--you'll be able to go out sketching with Miss
Augusta--long excursions, don't you know?  All day--"

"Oh, I shouldn't dare to suggest such a thing!" cried Miss Augusta.

"I'm sure I should be very happy, if you'd like to go," said
Lawrence, politely facing the dreadful possibility of a day with her
in the woods, while Brinsley would in all likelihood be riding with
Fanny or taking her out in a catboat.

But Miss Augusta paid little attention to him, so long as Brinsley
was talking, which was most of the time.  The man did not say
anything worth repeating, but Lawrence knew that he was far from
stupid in spite of his empty talk.  At last Lawrence merely looked
on, controlling his nervousness as well as he could and idly watching
the faces of the party.  Brinsley talked on and on, twisting to
pieces the stem of a flower which he had worn in his coat, but which
had unaccountably broken off.

Lawrence wondered whether Fanny, too, could be under the charm, and
he watched her with some anxiety.  There was something oddly
inscrutable in the young girl's face and in her quiet eyes that did
not often smile, even when she laughed.  He had the strong
impression, and he had felt it before, that she was very well able to
conceal her real thoughts and intentions, behind a mask of genuine
frankness and straightforwardness.  There are certain men and women
who possess that gift.  Without ever saying a word which even faintly
suggests prevarication, they have a masterly reticence about what
they do not wish to have known, whereby their acquaintances are
sometimes more completely deceived than they could be by the most
ingenious falsehood.  Lawrence was quite unable to judge from Fanny's
face whether she liked Brinsley or not, but he was wounded by a
certain deference, if that word be not too strong, which she showed
for the man's opinion, and which contrasted slightly with the
dictatorial superiority which she assumed towards Lawrence himself.
He consoled himself as well as he could with the reflection that he
really knew nothing about dogs, horses, or boats, and that Brinsley
was certainly his master in all such knowledge.

As an artist, he could not but admire the perfect proportions of the
visitor, the strength of him, and the satisfactory equilibrium of
forces which showed itself in his whole physical being; but as a
gentleman he was repelled by something not easily defined, and as a
lover he suspected a rival.  He had not much right, indeed, to
believe that Fanny Trehearne cared especially for him, any more than
to predicate that she was in love with Brinsley.  But, being in love
himself, he very naturally arrogated to himself such a right without
the slightest hesitation, and he boldly asserted in his heart that
Brinsley was nothing but a very handsome 'cad,' and that Fanny
Trehearne was on the verge of marrying him.

The conversation, meanwhile, was lively to the ear, if not to the
intelligence.  It was amazing to see how the three spinsters
flattered their darling at every turn.  Miss Cordelia led the chorus
of praise, and her sisters, to speak musically, took up the theme,
and answer, and counter-theme of the fugue, successively, in many
keys.  There was nothing that Mr. Brinsley did not know and could not
do, according to the three Miss Miners, or if there were anything, it
could not be worth knowing or doing.

"You'll flatter Mr. Brinsley to death," laughed Fanny, "though I must
say that he bears it well."

A faint shade of colour rose in Miss Cordelia's pale cheeks,
indicative of indignation.

"Fanny!" she cried reprovingly.  "How rude you are!  I'm sure I
wasn't saying anything at all flattering."

"I only wish people would say such things to me, then!" retorted the
young girl.

"We're all quite ready to, I'm sure, Miss Trehearne," said Brinsley,
smiling in a way that seemed to make his heavy dark mustache retreat
outward, up his cheeks, like the whiskers of a cat when it grins.

Fanny looked round and met Lawrence's eyes.

"You seem to be the only one who is ready," she said, laughing again.
"One isn't a crowd, as the little boys say."

"Where do you get such expressions, my dear child?" asked Cordelia.
"I really think you've learned more slang since you've been here this
summer, though I shouldn't have believed it possible!"

"There!" exclaimed Fanny, turning to Mr. Brinsley again.  "That's the
kind of flattery my relatives lavish on me from morning till night!
As if you didn't all talk slang, the whole time!"

"Fanny!" protested Augusta, whose accomplishments made her sensitive
and conscious.  "How can you say so?"

"Well--dialect, if you like the word better.  I'll prove it you.  You
all say 'won't' and 'shan't'--and most of you say 'I'd like'--for
instance--and Mr. Brinsley says 'ain't,' because he's English--"

"Well--what ought we to say?" asked Augusta.  "Nobody says 'I will
not,' and all that."

"You ought to.  It's dialect not to--and the absurd thing is that
people who go in for writing books generally write out all the things
you don't say, and write them in the wrong order.  We say 'wouldn't
you'--don't we?  Well, doesn't that stand for 'would not you'?  And
yet they print 'would you not'--always.  It's ridiculous.  I read a
criticism the other day on a man who had written a book and who wrote
'will not you' for 'won't you' and 'would not you' for 'wouldn't you'
because he wanted to be accurate.  You've no idea what horrid things
the critic said of him--he simply stood on his hind legs and pawed
the air!  It's so silly!  Either we should speak as we write, or
write as we speak.  I don't mean in philosophy--and things--the
steam-engine and the descent of man, and all that--but in writing out
conversations.  But then, of course, nobody will agree with me--so I
talk as I please."

"There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Miss Trehearne,"
observed Brinsley, assuming a wise air.  "Besides, I beg to differ
from Miss Miner, on one point--I venture to say that I don't dislike
your slang, if it's slang at all.  It's expressive, of its kind."

"At last!" cried Fanny, with a laugh.  "I get some praise--faint, but
perceptible."

"Faint praise isn't supposed to be complimentary," observed Lawrence,
laughing too.

"That's true," answered Fanny.  "It's just the opposite--the thing
with a d--  I won't say it on account of Cordelia.  She'd all frizzle
up with horror if I said it--wouldn't you, dear?  There'd positively
be nothing left of you--nothing but a dear little withered rose-leaf
with a dewdrop in the middle, representing your tears for my sins!"

"I'm afraid so," answered Cordelia, with a little accentuation of her
tired smile.

It was not a disagreeable smile in itself, except that it was
perpetual and was the expression of patiently and cheerfully borne
adversity, rather than of any satisfaction with things in general.
For the lives of the three Miss Miners had not been happy.  Sometimes
Fanny felt a sincere and loving pity for the three, and especially
for the eldest.  But there were also times when Cordelia's smile
exasperated her beyond endurance.

Mr. Brinsley rose to go, rather suddenly, after checking a movement
of his hand in the direction of his watch.  "You're not going,
surely!" cried one or two of the Miss Miners.  "You're coming to
dinner."

"Stay as you are," suggested Fanny, greatly to Lawrence's annoyance.

"You're awfully kind," answered the Canadian.  "But I can't,
to-night.  I wish I could.  I've asked several people to dine with me
at the Kebo Valley Club.  I'd cut any other engagement, to dine with
you--indeed I would.  I'm awfully sorry."

Many regrets were expressed that he could not stay, and the
leave-taking seemed sudden to Lawrence, who stood looking on, still
wondering why he disliked the man so much.  At last he heard the
front door closed behind him.

"Who is Mr. Brinsley?" he asked of Fanny Trehearne, while the three
Miss Miners were settling themselves again.

"Oh--I don't know.  I believe he's a Canadian Englishman.  He's very
agreeable--don't you think so?"

"He's the most delightful man I ever met!" sighed Augusta Miner,
before Lawrence had time to say anything.

"Did you notice his eyes, Mr. Lawrence?" asked Miss Elizabeth.
"Don't you think they're beautiful?"

"Beautiful?  Well--it depends," Lawrence answered with considerable
hesitation, for he did not in the least know what to say.

"Oh, but it isn't his eyes, nor his conversation!" put in Cordelia,
emphatically.  "It is that he's such a perfect gentleman!  You feel
that he wouldn't do anything that wasn't quite--quite--don't you
know?"

"I'm not sure that I do," replied Lawrence, in some bewilderment.
"But I understand what you mean," he added confidently.

"My dear," said Augusta to her eldest sister, "all that is perfectly
true, as I always say.  But those are not the things that make him
the most charming man I ever met.  Oh dear, no!  Ever so many men one
knows have good eyes, and talk well, and are gentlemen in every way.
I'm sure you wouldn't have a man about if he wasn't a gentleman.
Would you?"

"Oh no--in a wider sense--all the men we have to do with are, of
course--"

"Well," argued Augusta, "that's just what I'm telling you, my dear.
It isn't those things.  It lies much deeper.  It's a sort of refined
appreciation--an appreciative refinement--both, you know.  Now, the
other day, do you remember?--when I was playing that Mazurka of
Chopin--did you notice his expression?"

"But he always has that expression when anything pleases him very
much," said Miss Elizabeth.

"Yes, I know.  But just then, it was quite extraordinary--there's
something almost childlike--"

"If you go on about Mr. Brinsley in this way much longer, you'll all
have a fit," observed Fanny Trehearne.

"My dear," answered Cordelia, gravely, "do you know what a 'fit'
means?  Really, sometimes, you do exaggerate--"

"A fit means convulsions--what babies have, you know.  They used to
say it was brought on by looking at the moon."

Lawrence felt a strong inclination to laugh at this moment, but he
controlled it, and only smiled.  Then, to his considerable
embarrassment, they all appealed to him, probably in the hope of more
praise for Brinsley.

"Do tell us how he strikes you, Mr. Lawrence," said Cordelia.

"Yes, do!" echoed Elizabeth.

"Oh, please do!" cried Augusta, at the same moment.

"I should be curious to know what you think of him," said Fanny
Trehearne.

"Well, really," stammered the unfortunate young man, "I've hardly
seen him--I've not had time to form an opinion--you must know him,
and you all like him, and--it seems to me--that settles it.  Doesn't
it?"

While Lawrence was speaking, Miss Cordelia stooped and picked
something up from the floor.  He noticed that it was the leafless
stem of the flower which Brinsley had been twisting in his fingers.
She did not throw it away, but her hand closed over it, and Lawrence
did not see it again.




CHAPTER V.

Louis Lawrence had not been at Bar Harbour a week before he became
fully aware--if indeed there had previously been any doubt on the
subject in his mind--that he was very much in love with Fanny
Trehearne.  It became clear to him that, although he had believed
himself to be in love once or twice before then, he had been
mistaken, and that he had never known until the present time exactly
what love meant.  He was not even sure that he was pleased with the
passion, or, at least, with the form in which it attacked him.
Sensitive as he was, it 'took him hard,' as the saying is, and he
felt that it had the better of him at every turn, and disposed of him
in spite of himself at every hour of the day.

When he was alone he wondered why he had been asked to the house, and
whether Mr. and Mrs. Trehearne, who were abroad, knew anything about
it.  He was a modest man, and was inclined to underestimate himself,
so that it could never have occurred to him that Fanny Trehearne
might have been strongly attracted by him during their acquaintance
in town, and might have insisted that he should be asked to come and
pass a fortnight.  Moreover, Fanny lost no opportunity of impressing
upon him that he was a great favourite with the three Miss Miners,
and she managed to convey the impression that he had been asked
chiefly to please them, though she never said so.

Meanwhile, however, it was evident that the three sisters were
absorbed in Mr. Brinsley, and that when the latter was present they
took very little notice of Lawrence.  He laughed at the thought that
the three old maids should all be equally in love with the showy
Canadian, and he told himself that the thing was ridiculous; that
they were merely enthusiastic women,--'gushing' women, he called them
in his thoughts,--who were flattered by the diplomatic and unfailing
civilities of a man who was evidently in pursuit of Fanny Trehearne.

For by this time he was convinced that Brinsley had made up his mind
to marry Fanny if he could; and he hated him all the more for it,
even to formulating wicked prayers for the suitor's immediate
destruction.  The worst of it was, that the man might possibly
succeed.  A girl who will and can ride anything, who beats everybody
at tennis, and who is as good as most men in a sail-boat, may
naturally be supposed to admire a man who does those things, and many
others, in a style bordering upon perfection.  This same man, too,
though not exactly clever in an intellectual way, possessed at least
the gifts of fluency and tact, combined with great coolness under all
circumstances, so far as Lawrence had observed him.  It was hardly
fair to assert that he was dishonest because he flattered the three
Miss Miners, and occupied himself largely in trying to anticipate
their smallest wishes.  He did it so well as to make even Fanny
Trehearne believe that he liked them for their own sakes, and that
his intentions were disinterested and not directed wholly to herself.
Of course she knew that he wished to marry her; but she was used to
that.  Two, at least, of several men who had already informed her
that their happiness depended upon winning her, were even now in Bar
Harbour,--presumably repeating that or a similar statement to more or
less willing ears.  As for Lawrence, he could not fairly blame
Brinsley for his behaviour--he confessed in secret that he flattered
the three Miss Miners himself, with small regard for unprejudiced
truth.  Besides, they were very kind to him.  But he found it hard to
speak fairly of Brinsley when alone with Fanny Trehearne.

"I don't like the man," he said, on inadequate provocation, for the
twentieth time.

"I know you don't," answered Fanny, calmly, "but that's no reason for
letting go of the tiller.  Mind the boom! she's going about--no--it's
of no use to put the helm up now.  We've no way on--let her go!
No--I don't mean that--oh, do give it to me!"

And thereupon Fanny, who was sitting forward of him on the weather
side, stretched her long arm across him, pushing him back into his
corner, and put the helm hard down with her left hand, while she
hauled in the sheet as much as she could with her right, bending her
head low to avoid the boom as it came swinging over.

Lawrence could not help looking down at her, and he forgot all about
the boom, being far too little familiar with boating to avoid it
instinctively, when he felt the boat going about.  It came slowly,
for there was little wind; and the catboat, having no way on to speak
of, was in no hurry to right herself and go over on the other
tack,--but just as the shadow of the sail warned him that something
was coming, he looked up, and at the same instant received the blow
full on his forehead, just above his eyes.  He wore a soft, knitted
woollen cap, which did not even afford the protection of a visor.

Fanny turned her head at once, for the blow had been audible, and she
saw what had happened.  Lawrence had raised his hand to his forehead
instinctively.

"Are you hurt?" asked Fanny, quickly, keeping her eyes upon him, and
still holding the helm hard over so as to give the boat way.

Lawrence did not answer at once.  He was half stunned, and still
covered his forehead with his hand.  The young girl looked at him
intently, and there was an expression in her eyes which he, at least,
had never seen there--a sudden, scared light which had nothing to do
with fear.

"Are you hurt?" she asked again, gently.

His delicate face grew suddenly pale, as the blood, which had rushed
up at first under the shock of the blow, subsided as suddenly.  Fanny
turned her eyes from him and looked ahead and under the sail to
leeward.  She let out a little more sheet, so that the boat could run
very free; for the craft, like most catboats, had a weather helm when
the sheet was well aft, and Fanny wanted her hands.  Moreover,
Lawrence was now on the lee side with her, and the boat would have
heeled too far over with the wind abeam.  As soon as the sail drew
properly, Fanny sat up beside Lawrence, steering across him with her
left hand.  With her right she could reach the water, and she scooped
up what she could in her hollow palm, wetting her sleeve to the
shoulder as she did so, for the boat was gaining speed.  She dashed
the drops in his face.

"Are you hurt?" she asked a third time, drawing away his hand and
laying her own wet one upon his forehead.

"Oh no," he answered faintly.  "I'm not hurt at all."

She could tell by his voice that he was not speaking the truth, and a
moment later, as he leaned against the side of the boat, his head
fell back, and his lips parted in a dead faint.

There was no scorn in the young girl's face for a man who could faint
so easily, as it seemed; but the scared look came into her eyes
again, and without hesitation, still steering with her left hand, she
passed her right arm round his neck and supported him.  The breeze
was almost in her face now, for she was looking astern, and she knew
by the way it fanned her whether she was keeping the boat fairly
before it.

Lawrence did not revive immediately, and it was fortunate that there
was so little wind, or Fanny might have got into trouble.  She looked
at him a moment longer and hesitated, for the position was a
difficult one, as will be admitted.  But she was equal to it and knew
what to do.  Letting his head fall back as it would, she withdrew her
arm, let go the helm, and hauled in the sheet as the boat's head came
up.  As the boom came over towards Lawrence's head, she caught it and
lifted it over him, hauled in the slack and made the sheet fast,
springing forward instantly to let go the halliards.  The gaff came
rattling down, and she gathered in the bellying sail hastily and took
a turn round everything with the end of the throat halliard, which
chanced to be long enough--the gaskets were out of her reach, in the
bottom of the boat.

There was little or no sea on, as the tide was near the turning, and
the cat-boat was rocking softly to the little waves when Fanny came
aft again.  Lawrence's head was still hanging back, his lips were
parted, and his eyes were half open, showing the whites in a rather
ghastly way.  With strong arms the young girl half lifted him, and
let him gently down upon the cushions in the stern-sheets.  Then she
leaned over the side and wetted her handkerchief and laid it upon his
bruised forehead.  The cold water and the change of position brought
him to himself.

He opened his eyes and looked up into her face as she bent over him.
Then, all at once, he seemed to realize what had happened, and with
an exclamation he tried to sit up.  But she would not let him.

"Lie still a minute longer!" she said authoritatively.  "You'll be
all right in a little while."

"But it isn't anything, I assure you," he protested, looking about
him in a dazed way.  "Please let me sit up!  I won't make a fool of
myself again--it's only my heart, you know.  It stops sometimes--it
wasn't the knock."

"Your heart?" repeated Fanny, with greater anxiety than Lawrence
might have expected.  "You haven't got heart disease, have you?"

"Oh no--not so bad as that.  It's all right now.  It will begin to
beat very hard presently--there--I can feel it--and then it will go
on regularly again.  It isn't anything.  I fancy I smoke too much--or
it's coffee--or something.  Please don't look as though you thought
it were anything serious, Miss Trehearne.  I assure you, it's
nothing.  Lots of people have it."

"It is serious.  Anything that has to do with the heart is serious."

Lawrence smiled faintly.

"Is that a joke?" he asked.  "If it is, please let me sit up."

"No--that isn't a reason," answered Fanny, laughing a little, though
her eyes were still grave.  "You must lie still a little longer.  You
might faint again, you know.  It must be dangerous to have one's
heart behaving so strangely."

"Oh--I don't believe so."

"You don't believe so?  You mean that it's possible, but that you
hope it won't stop?  Is that it?"

"Oh--well--perhaps.  But I don't think there's any real danger.
Besides--if it did, it's easy, you know."

"What's easy?"

"It's an easy death--over at once, in a flash.  No lingering and last
words and all that."  He laughed.

Fanny Trehearne's sunburned cheeks grew pale under their tan, and her
cool grey eyes turned slowly away from his face, and rested on the
blue water.

"Please don't talk about such things!" she said in a tone that seemed
hard to Lawrence.

"Are you afraid of death?" he asked, still smiling.

"I?"  She turned upon him indignantly.  "No--I don't believe that I'm
much afraid of anything--for myself."

"You turned pale," observed the young man, raising himself on his
elbow as he lay on the cushions, and looking at her.  Her colour came
back more quickly than it had gone.

"Did I?" she asked indifferently enough.  "It's probably the sun.
It's hot, lying here and drifting."

"No.  It wasn't the sun," said Lawrence, with conviction.  "You were
thinking that somebody you are fond of might die suddenly.  We were
talking about death."

"What difference does it make whom I was thinking of?"  She spoke
impatiently now, still watching the water.

"It makes all the difference there is, that's all," answered
Lawrence.  "Won't you tell me?"

"No.  Certainly not!  Why should I?  Look here--if you're well enough
to talk, you're well enough to help me to get the sail up again."

"Of course I am--but--"  Lawrence showed no inclination to move.

"But what?  You're too lazy, I suppose."  Fanny laughed.  "Let me see
your forehead--take your cap off," she added with a change of tone.

Lawrence thrust the cap back, which did not help matters much, as his
hair grew low and partially hid the bruise.  The skin was not broken,
but it was almost purple, and a large swelling had already appeared.

"It's too bad!" exclaimed Fanny, looking at it, as he bent down his
head, and softly touching it with her ungloved hand.  "Tell me--do
you feel very weak and dizzy still?  I was only laughing when I spoke
of your helping me with the sail."

"Oh no!" answered Lawrence, cheerfully.  "It aches a little, of
course, but it will soon go off."

"And your heart?" asked Fanny, anxiously.  "Is it all right now?  You
don't think you'll faint again, do you?"

"Not a bit."

"I'm not sure.  You're very pale."

"I'm always pale, you know.  It's my nature.  It doesn't mean
anything.  Some people are naturally pale."

"But you're not.  You're dark, or brown, and not red, but you're not
usually pale.  I wish I had some whiskey, or something, to give you."

She looked round the boat rather helplessly as though expecting to
discover a remedy for his weakness.

"Please don't make so much of it," said Lawrence, in a tone which
showed that he was almost annoyed by her persistence.  "I assure you
that I won't have such bad taste as to die on your hands before we
get to land!"

Fanny rose to her feet and turned away from him with an impatient
exclamation.

"Just keep the helm amidships while I get the sail up," she said,
without looking at him, and stepping upon the seat which ran along
the side, she was on the little deck in a moment, with both halliards
in her hands.

Lawrence sprang forward to help her, forgetting what she had just
told him to do.

"Do as I told you!" she exclaimed quickly and impatiently.  "Do you
know what the tiller is?  Well, keep it right in the middle till I
tell you to do something else."

"Don't be fierce about it," laughed Lawrence, obeying her.

But when she was not looking, he pressed one hand to his forehead
with all his might, as though to drive out the pain, which increased
with every minute.

Meanwhile, Fanny laid her weight to the halliards, and the sail went
flapping up, throat and peak.  The girl was very strong, and had been
taught to handle a catboat when she had been a mere child, so that
there was nothing extraordinary in her accomplishing unaided a little
feat which would have puzzled many a smart young gentleman who
fancies himself half a sailor.




CHAPTER VI.

It chanced that on that evening Roger Brinsley was to dine with the
Miss Miners.  He was often asked, and he accepted as often as he
could.  As a matter of fact, he was not so much sought after
elsewhere, as he was willing to let the four ladies believe, for
there were people in Bar Harbour who shared Lawrence's distrust of
him, while admitting that, so far as they could tell, it was quite
unfounded.  There was nothing against him.  The men said that he
played a good deal at the club, and remarked that he was a good type
of the professional gambler, but no one ever said that he won too
much.  On the contrary, it was believed that he had lost altogether
rather heavily during the six weeks since he had first appeared.  He
paid cheerfully, however, and was thought to be rich.  Nevertheless,
the men whose opinion was worth having did not like him.  They
wondered why the Miss Miners had him so often to the house, and
whether there were not some danger that Fanny Trehearne might take a
fancy to him.

It was very late when Fanny and Lawrence got home, for the catboat
had been carried far up Frenchman's Bay during the time after the
little accident, and it had been necessary to beat to windward for
two hours against the rising tide in order to fetch the channel
between Bar Island and Sheep Porcupine.  The consequence was that the
pair had scarcely time to dress for dinner after they reached the
house.

Lawrence felt ill and tired, and was conscious that the swelling on
his forehead was not beautiful to see.  He was still dazed, and by no
means himself, when he looked into the glass and knotted his tie.
But though he might well have given an excuse and stayed in his room
instead of going down to dinner, he refused to consider the
possibility of such a thing even for a moment.  He felt something
just then which more than compensated him for his bruises and his
wretched sensation of weakness.

The conversation, after the boat had got under way again, had
languished, and had been so constantly interrupted by the often
repeated operation of going about, that Lawrence had not succeeded in
bringing it back to the point at which Fanny had broken it off when
she had gone forward to hoist the sail.  But he had more than half
guessed what might have followed, and the reasonable belief that he
might be right had changed the face of his world.  He believed that
Fanny had turned pale at the idea that his life was in danger.

One smiles at the simplicity of the thought, in black and white, by
itself, just itself, and nothing more.  Yet it was a great matter to
Louis Lawrence, and as he looked at his bruised face in the glass he
felt that he was too happy to shut himself up in his room for the
evening, out of sight of the cool grey eyes he loved.

He had assuredly not meant to frighten Fanny when he had spoken, and
he had been very far from inventing an imaginary ailment with which
to excite her sympathy.  The whole thing had come up unexpectedly as
the result of the accident.  Hence its value.

As often happens, the two people in the house who had been most
hurried in dressing were the first down, and as Lawrence entered the
library he heard Fanny's footstep behind him.  He bowed as they came
forward together to the empty fireplace.  She looked at him
critically before she spoke.

"You're badly knocked about.  How do you feel?"  There was a man-like
directness in her way of asking questions, which was softened by the
beauty of her voice.

"I feel--as I never felt before," answered Lawrence, conscious that
his eyes grew dark as they met hers.  "You told me something
to-day--though you did not say it."

Fanny did not avoid his gaze.

"Did I?" she asked very gravely.

"Yes.  Plainly."

"I'm very sorry," she answered, with a little sigh, and turning from
him at last.

"Are you taking it back?"  Louis's voice trembled as he asked the
question.

"Hush!"

Just then the voices of the three Miss Miners were heard in the hall,
and at the same instant the distant tinkle of the front-door bell
announced the arrival of Roger Brinsley.

The conversation turned upon Lawrence's accident, from the first, as
was natural, considering his appearance.  He dwelt laughingly on his
utter helplessness in a boat, while Fanny was inclined to consider
the whole affair as rather serious.  For some reason or other
Brinsley was displeased at it, and ventured to say a disagreeable
thing.  He had lost at cards in the afternoon and was in bad humour.
He spoke to Fanny with affected apprehension.

"You really ought to take somebody with you who knows enough to lend
a hand at a pinch, Miss Trehearne," he said.  "Suppose that you got
into a squall and had to take a reef--you'd be in a bad way, you
know."

"If I couldn't manage a catboat alone, I'd walk," answered Fanny,
with contempt.

"Yes--no doubt.  But if a squall really came up, what would you do?
Mr. Lawrence confesses that he couldn't help you."

"Are you chaffing, Mr. Brinsley?" asked Fanny, severely.  "Or do you
think I really shouldn't know what to do?"

"I doubt whether you would."

"Oh--I'd let go the halliards and lash the helm amidships, and take
my reef with the sail down--'hoist 'em up and off again,' after that,
as the fishermen say."

"I think you could stand an examination," said Brinsley.

"I daresay.  Could you?  If you were going about off a lee shore in a
storm and missed stays, could you club-haul your ship, Mr. Brinsley?"

The three Miss Miners stared at the two in surprise and wonder, not
understanding a word of what they were saying.  It was apparent to
Lawrence, however, that Fanny was bent on putting Brinsley in the
position of confessing his ignorance at last; but where the young
girl had learned even the language of seamanship, which she used with
such apparent precision, was more than Lawrence could guess.
Brinsley did not answer at once, and Fanny pressed him.

"Do you even know what club-hauling means?" she asked, mercilessly.

"Well--no--really, I think the term must be obsolete."

"Not at sea," retorted Fanny.

This was crushing, and Brinsley, who was really a very good hand at
ordinary sailing, grew angry.

"Of course you've had some experience in catboats," Fanny continued.
"That isn't serious sailing, you know.  It's about equivalent, in
horsemanship, to riding a donkey--a degree less dignified than
walking, and a little less trouble."

"I won't say anything about myself, Miss Trehearne," said Brinsley,
"but you might treat the catboat a little less roughly.  I didn't
know you'd ever sailed anything else."

Here the Miss Miners interposed, one after the other, protesting that
it was not fair to use up the opportunities of conversation in such
nautical jargon.

"I only wished to prove to Mr. Brinsley that I'm to be trusted at
sea," Fanny answered.

"My dear child," said Miss Cordelia, "Mr. Brinsley knows that, and he
must be a good judge, having been in the navy."

"Oh, I didn't know you'd been in the navy, Mr. Brinsley," said the
pitiless young girl, fixing her eyes on his with an expression which
he, perhaps, understood, though no one else noticed it.  "The English
navy, of course?"

"The English navy," repeated Mr. Brinsley, sharply.

"Oh, well--that accounts for your not knowing how to club-haul a
ship.  Your own people are always saying that your service is going
to the dogs."

Even Lawrence was surprised, and Brinsley looked angrily across the
table at his tormentor, but found nothing to say on the spur of the
moment.

"However," Fanny continued with some condescension, "I'm rather glad
to know you're a navy man.  I'll get you to come out with me some day
and verify some of the bearings on our local chart.  I believe there
are one or two mistakes.  We'll take the sextant and my chronometer
with us, and the tables, and take the sun--each of us, you know, and
work it out separately, and see how near we get.  That will be great
fun.  You must all come and see Mr. Brinsley and me take the sun,"
she added, looking round at the others.  "Let's go to-morrow.  We'll
take our luncheon with us and picnic on board.  Can you come
to-morrow, Mr. Brinsley?  We must start at eleven so as to get far
enough out to have a horizon by noon.  I hope you're not engaged?
Are you?"

"I'm sorry to say I am," answered the unfortunate man.  "I'm going to
ride with some people just at that hour."

"How unlucky!" exclaimed Fanny, who had expected the refusal.  "I'll
take Mr. Lawrence, anyhow, and give him a lesson in navigation."

"I've had one to-day," said Lawrence, affecting to laugh, for it was
his instinct to try and turn off any conversation from a disagreeable
subject.

"You'll be all the better for another to-morrow," answered Fanny.

As she spoke to the artist, her tone changed so perceptibly that even
the Miss Miners noticed it.  Brinsley took the first opportunity of
talking to Miss Cordelia, of whose admiration he was sure, and the
rest of the dinner passed off in peace, Brinsley avoiding a renewal
of hostilities with something almost like fear, for he felt that the
extraordinary young girl who knew so much about navigation was
watching for another opportunity of humiliating him, and would not be
merciful in using it.

The change in her manner to him had been very sudden, as though she
had on that particular day made up her mind about something
concerning him.  Hitherto she had treated him almost cordially,
certainly with every appearance of liking him.  He had even of late
begun to fancy that her colour heightened when he entered the
room,--a phenomenon which, if real, was attributable rather to
another cause, and connected with Lawrence's presence in the house.

After dinner the whole party went out upon the verandah, a favourite
manoeuvre of Miss Cordelia's, whereby the society of Mr. Brinsley was
not wasted upon smoke and men's talk in the dining-room.  This
evening, however, instead of sitting down at once in her usual place,
Cordelia slipped her arm through Fanny's, and led her off to the
other side and down the steps into the garden.

"The moonlight is so lovely," said Miss Cordelia, "and I want to talk
to you.  Let us walk a little--do you mind?"

The two went along the path in silence, in and out among the trees.
The moon was full.  From the sea came up the sound of the tide,
washing the smooth rocks at high water.  The breeze had died away at
sunset and the deep sky was cloudless.  Here and there the greater
stars twinkled softly, but the little ones were all lost in the
moonlight, like diamonds in a pure fountain.  Everything was asleep
except the watchful, wakeful sea.  The two women stood still and
looked across the lawn.  At last Miss Miner spoke.

"Why were you so unkind to Mr. Brinsley to-night?" she asked in a low
voice.

Fanny glanced at her before she answered.  The eldest Miss Miner's
face had once been almost beautiful.  In the moonlight, the delicate,
clearly chiselled features were lovely still, but a little ghostly,
and the young girl saw that the fixed smile had disappeared for once,
leaving a look of pain in its place.

"I didn't mean to be unkind," Fanny began.  "That is," she added
quickly, correcting herself, "I'm not quite sure of what I meant.  I
think I did mean to hurt him.  He's so strong, and he's always
showing that he despises Mr. Lawrence, because he isn't an athlete.
As though a man must be a prize-fighter to be nice!"

"Well--but--Mr. Lawrence doesn't mind.  You see how he takes it all.
Why should you fight battles for him?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't.  But--why should you take up the cudgels for
Mr. Brinsley?  He's quite able to take care of himself, if he will
only tell the truth."

"If!" exclaimed Miss Cordelia, in ready resentment.  "He's the most
truthful man alive."

"Oh!  And he told you he had been in the English navy."

"What has that to do with it?  Of course he has, if he says so."

"He's unwise to say so, because he hasn't," answered Fanny, in her
usual direct way.

"How in the world can you say that a man like Mr. Brinsley--an
honourable man, I'm sure--is telling a deliberate falsehood?  I'm
surprised at you, Fanny--indeed I am!  It isn't like you."

"Did you ever know me to tell you anything that wasn't exactly true?"
asked the young girl, looking down into her elderly cousin's sweet,
sad face, for she was much the taller.

"No--of course not--but--"

"Well, Cousin Cordelia, I tell you that your Mr. Brinsley has never
been in the English navy.  I don't say that I think so.  I say that I
know it.  Will you believe me, or him?'

"Oh, Fanny!"  Miss Cordelia raised her eyes with a frightened glance.

"Not that it matters," added Fanny, looking away across the moonlit
lawn again.  "Who cares?  Only, it's one of those lies that go
against a man," she continued after a short pause.  "A man may
pretend that he has shot ten million grisly bears in his back yard,
or hooked a salmon that weighed a hundred-weight--people will laugh
and say that he's a story-teller.  It's all right, you know--and
nobody minds.  But when a man says he's been in the army or the navy,
and hasn't--people call him a liar and cut him.  I don't know why
it's so, I'm sure, but it is--and we all know it."

"Yes," answered Cordelia, almost tremulously; "but you haven't proved
that Mr. Brinsley isn't telling the truth--"

"Oh yes, I have!  There never was a deep-sea sailor yet who had never
heard of club-hauling a ship to save her.  I know about those things.
I always make navy officers talk to me about those things whenever I
get a chance.  Besides, I can prove it to you.  Ask the first captain
of a fishing-schooner you meet down at the landing what it means.
But don't tell me I don't know--it's too absurd."

Miss Cordelia looked down.  Her hand still rested on Fanny's arm, and
it trembled now so that the young girl felt it.

"What does it mean, then?" asked Cordelia, faintly.

"Oh, it's a long operation to tell about.  It's when you've got a
lee-shore in a gale, and you want to go about and can't, because you
miss stays every time, and you let go an anchor, and the ship swings
to it, and just as she begins to get way on, you slip your chain, and
she pays off on the other tack.  Of course you lose your anchor."

"Oh--you lose the anchor?  To save the ship?  I see."

"Exactly."

"You lose the anchor to save the ship," repeated Cordelia, softly, as
though she were trying to remember the words for future use.  "Shall
we go back?" she suggested, rather abruptly.

"I wish you'd answer me one question first," said Fanny.

"Yes.  What is it?"

"Why are you so awfully anxious to stand up for Mr. Brinsley?  You're
not in love with him, are you?"

Cordelia started very perceptibly, and turned her face away.  Then,
all at once, she laughed a little hysterically.

"In love?  At my age?"

And she laughed again, and laughed, strange to say, till she cried,
clinging all the time to the young girl's strong arm.  Fanny did not
ask any more questions as they walked slowly back to the house.




CHAPTER VII.

"Come with me into the village, and help me to do errands," said
Fanny on the following morning, just as Lawrence was feeling for his
pipe in his pocket after breakfast.  "You can smoke till we get
there.  It wouldn't hurt you to smoke less, anyway."

They went down through the garden, fresh and dewy still from the
short, cool night, towards the sea.  The path to the village lies
along a low sea-wall, just high enough and strong enough to keep the
tide from the lawns.  But the tide was beginning to run out at that
hour, and was singing and rocking itself away from the shore, leaving
the big loose stones and the chocolate-coloured rocks all wet and
shining in the morning sun.  The breeze was springing up in the
offing and would reach the land before long, kissing each island as
it passed softly by, and gently breaking with dark blue the smoothly
undulating water.

The sun was almost behind the pair as they walked along the sands,
and shone full upon the harbour as it came into view, lighting up the
deep green of the islands between which passes the channel, and
bringing up the warm brown of the soil through thick weaving spruces.
The graceful yachts caught the sunshine, too, their hulls gleaming
darkly, or dazzlingly white, their slender masts pencilled in light,
against the trees, and standing out like threaded needles when they
showed against the pale, clear sky.  In the bright northern air, the
artist would have complained that there was no atmosphere--no
'depth,' nor 'distance,' but only the distinct farness of the objects
a long way off--nothing at all like 'atmospheric perspective.'

"Isn't it a glorious day!" exclaimed Fanny, looking seaward at a
white-sailed fishing-schooner, which scarcely moved in the morning
air.

"It's a little bit too swept and garnished," answered Lawrence.
"That is--for a picture, you know.  It's better to feel than to look
at, if you understand what I mean.  It feels so northern, that when
you look at it, it seems bare and unfinished without a little snow."

"But you like it, don't you?" asked the young girl, in prompt protest.

"Of course I do.  What a question!  I thought I'd been showing how
much I liked it, ever since I got here."

"I'm not sure that you show what you like and don't like," said
Fanny, in a tone of reflexion.  "Perhaps it's better not to."

"You don't, at all events.  At least--aren't you rather an
inscrutable person?  Of course I don't know," he added rather
foolishly, pulling his woollen cap over his eyes and glancing at her
sideways.

"Inscrutable!  What a big word!  'The inscrutable ways of
Providence'--that's what they always say, don't they?  Still--if you
mean that I don't 'tell,' you're quite right.  I don't--when I can
keep my countenance.  Do you?  It's always far better not to tell.
Besides, if you commit yourself to an opinion, you're committing
yourself to gaol."

"What a way of putting it!  But it's really true.  I should so much
like to ask you a question about one of your opinions."

"Why don't you?" asked Fanny, turning her eyes to his.

"Oh--lots of reasons: I'm afraid, in the first place; and then, I'm
not sure you have one, and then--"

"Say it all--I hate people who hesitate!"

"Well--no.  There's a great deal more to say than I want to say.
Let's talk about the landscape."

"No.  I want to know what the question is which you wished you might
ask," insisted Fanny.

"It's about Mr. Brinsley," said Lawrence, plunging.

"Well, what about him?"  Fanny's tone changed perceptibly, and her
expression grew cold and forbidding.

"Nothing particular--unless it's impertinent--so I won't ask it."

"You won't?" asked Fanny, slackening her pace and looking hard at
him.  "Not if I ask you to?"

"No," answered Lawrence.  "I'd oblige you by asking a different
question, but not that one.  You wouldn't know the difference."

"That's ingenuous, at all events."  She looked away again and laughed.

"I never fight when I can help it, and you looked dangerous just now.
You always are, in one way or another."

"What do you mean?"

"Only that when you don't happen to be frightening me out of my wits,
you are charming me into a perfect idiot."

"Something between an express train and the Lorelei," laughed Fanny.

But the quick, girlish blood had sprung to her sunny cheeks and
lingered a moment, as though it loved the light.  They were now in
the village--in the broad street where the shops are.  At that hour
there were many people moving about on foot and in every sort of
vehicle, short of broughams and landaus.  There was the smart couple
in a high buckboard, just out for a morning drive; there was the
elderly farmer with his buggy or his hooded cart--his wife seated
beside him, with her queer, sad, winter-blighted face, and her
decent, but dusty black frock;--there was the young farmer 'sport'
driving his favourite trotting horse in a sulky.  And of pedestrians
there was no end.  A smart party bent on a day's excursion by sea
came down the board walk, brilliant in perfectly new blue and white
serge, with bits of splendid orange and red here and there, fresh
faces, light hearts, great appetites, and the most trifling of
cares--the care for trifles themselves.  Fanny nodded and smiled, and
was smiled at, while Lawrence attempted to lift his soft woollen cap
from his head with some sort of grace--a thing impossible, as men who
wear soft woollen caps well know.  But the air seemed lighter and
brighter for so much youth laughing in it.

Fanny dived into one shop after another, Lawrence following her,
rather awkwardly, as a man always does under the circumstances, until
he is old enough to find out that there is a time for watching as
well as a time for talking, and that more may be learned of a woman's
character from the way she treats shopkeepers than is generally
supposed.  Fanny showed surprising alternations of firmness and
condescension, for she had the gift of managing people and of getting
what she wanted, which is a rare gift and one not to be despised.
She asked very kindly after the fishmonger's baby, but she did not
hesitate to tell the grocer the hardest of truths about the butter.

"I always do my own marketing," she said to Lawrence, in answer to
his look of surprise.  "It amuses me, and I get much better things.
My poor dear cousins don't understand marketing a bit--though they
ought to.  That's the reason why they never get on, somehow.  I
believe marketing is the best school in the world for learning what's
worth having and what isn't.  Don't you?"

"I never had a chance to learn," laughed Lawrence.  "I wish you'd
teach me how to get on, as you call it."

"Oh--it's very easy!  You only need know exactly what you want, and
then try to get it as hard as you can.  Most people don't know, and
don't try."

"For that matter I know perfectly well what I want."

"Then why don't you try and get it?" asked Fanny, pausing at the door
of another shop as though interested in his answer.

"I'm not sure that it's in the market," answered the young man, his
eyes in hers.

"Have you enquired?"  Fanny's mouth twitched with the coming smile.

"No--not exactly.  I'm trying to find out by inspection."

"If you don't think it's likely to be too dear, you'd better
ask--whatever it is."

"Money couldn't buy it.  Besides, I've got none," added Lawrence.

"You might get it on credit," said Fanny.  "But I think it's very
doubtful."

Thereupon she entered the shop, and Lawrence followed her, meditating
deeply upon his chances, and asking himself whether he should run the
great risk at once, or wait and watch Brinsley.  To tell the truth,
he thought his own chances very small; for he under-estimated all his
advantages by looking at them in the light of his present poverty,
not seeing that in so doing he might be underestimating Fanny
Trehearne as well.  A somewhat excessive caution, which sometimes
goes with timidity, though not at all of the sort which produces
cowardice, is often the result of an education which has not brought
a man closely into competition with other men.  No one in common
sense, save the Miss Miners and Lawrence himself, could have imagined
that Brinsley had a chance against him.  For anything that people
knew, Brinsley might turn out to be an adventurer of the worst kind,
whereas Lawrence was of good birth, a man of whom many knew who he
was, and whence he came, and that he had as good a right to ask for
Fanny's hand as any man.  He was poor just now, but no one believed
that his rich uncle, a childless widower of fifty-five, would marry
again, and Lawrence was sure to have money in the end, though he
might wait thirty years for it.

As for Brinsley, Fanny Trehearne either could not or would not
pretend that she liked him, even in the most moderate degree of
distant liking, after she had satisfied herself that he was not a
truthful person in those matters in which truth decides the right of
a man to be considered honourable.  Being, on the whole, more careful
than most people about the accuracy of what she said, she was less
inclined to make allowances for others than a great many of her
contemporaries.  Besides, Brinsley had not only told a lie, which was
mean in itself, but he had allowed himself to be found out, which
Fanny considered contemptible.

Up to this time she had seemed to think him very pleasant company and
not a bad addition to the society of the place.

"He's so good-looking!" she had often said to the approving Miss
Miners.  "And he has good manners, and knows how to come into a room,
and how to sit down and get up--and do lots of things," she added
vaguely.

In this opinion her three old-maid cousins fully concurred, and they
were quite ready to say as much in his favour as Fanny could have
heard without laughing.  They were therefore greatly distressed when
she changed her mind.

"He's handsome," Fanny now admitted.  "But he's a little too showy.
I've seen men like him at races, but they were not the men who were
introduced to me.  I don't think they knew anybody I knew--that sort
of man, don't you know?  And his English accent isn't quite English,
and I don't like his little flat whiskers, and his hands irritate me.
Besides, he said he had been in the navy, and now he admits that he
never was.  That's enough."

"My dear Fanny," Cordelia answered, on such occasions, "there was a
misunderstanding about that, you know.  He was in the navy, since he
was an officer of Marines, but of course he wasn't expected to know--"

"The Marines!" exclaimed Fanny, contemptuously.  "It's only a way of
getting out of it, I'm sure!"

Thereupon the three Miss Miners told her that she was very unjust and
prejudiced, as they retired together to praise Mr. Brinsley, out of
hearing of their young cousin's tart comment.  Miss Cordelia had made
it all right by giving the man an opportunity of justifying himself
after he had privately explained to her that the Marines were an
integral part of the navy, but that they were not called upon to know
anything about navigation,--a fact which must account for his
ignorance.

He had very firm friends, to say the least of it, in the three
spinsters, who might have been said to worship the ground on which he
walked, and who thought it a sin and a shame that Fanny should treat
him as she did.  As for young Lawrence, he looked on, with his
observant artist's eyes, and never mentioned Brinsley, except to
Fanny herself.  For he was not at all lacking in tact, however
deficient he might be in the manly accomplishments.

"Do you know," Fanny began, one day when they were walking in the
woods, "I don't half mind you're being such a bad hand at things.
It's funny.  I thought I should, at first--but I don't."

"I'm awfully glad," answered Lawrence, not finding anything else to
say to express his gratitude.

"Oh, you may well be!" laughed Fanny.  "I don't forgive everybody for
being a duffer.  And that's what you are, you know.  You don't mind
my saying so?"

"Oh no, not at all."  The tone in which he spoke did not express much
conviction, however.

"I believe you do," said Fanny, thoughtfully.

They were following a narrow path which led upwards along the bank of
a brook under overarching trees.  Here and there the bank had fallen
away, and the woodmen had laid down 'slabs' of the rippings first
taken off by the saw-mill in squaring timber.  It was damp under
foot, for it had lately rained, and the wet, chocolate-coloured dead
leaves of the previous year filled the chinks between the bits of
wood, and sometimes lay all over them, a slippery mass.  It was still
and hot and damp all through the thick growth on the midsummer's
afternoon.  The whispered mystery of countless living things filled
the quiet air with a vibration more felt than heard, which overcame
the silence, but did not break the stillness.

The path was very narrow, and Fanny had to walk before her companion.
Their voices seemed to echo back to them from very near, as they
talked, for amongst the trees the rich undergrowth grew man-high.  On
their right, below them, the brook laughed softly to itself as a faun
might laugh, drowsily, half asleep in a hollow of the deep woods.

And then, through the warm-breathing secret places, where all that
was living was growing fiercely in the sudden summer, stole the
heart-thrilling fragrance of all that lived, than which nothing more
surely stirs young blood in the glory of the year.

For some minutes the pair walked on in silence, Fanny leading.  The
young man watched the strong, lithe figure of the girl as she moved
swiftly and sure-footed before him.  Suddenly she stopped, without
turning round, and she seemed to be listening.  A low ray of sunlight
ran quivering through the trees and played with a crisp ringlet of
her hair, too full of life and strength to be smoothed to dull order
with the rest.

"What is it?" asked Lawrence, in a low voice, watching her.

"I thought I heard some one in the woods," she answered quickly, and
then listened again.

Not a sound broke the dream-like stillness.

"I'm sure I heard something," said Fanny.  Then she laughed a little.
"Besides," she added, "it's very likely.  It's awfully hot.  Here's a
good place to sit down."

It was not a particularly good place, being damp and sloping, and
Lawrence planted his heels firmly amongst the wet, dead leaves to
keep himself from slipping down into the path as he sat beside her.

"There's always something going on in the woods," she said softly and
dreamily.  "The trees talk to each other all day long, and the
squirrels sit and crack nuts while they listen to the conversation.
I like the woods.  Somehow one never feels alone when one gets where
things grow--does one?"

"I don't mind being alone when I can't be--I mean--"  Lawrence did
not finish his sentence, but bent down and picked up a twig from the
ground.  "Isn't it funny!" he exclaimed, twisting it in his hands.
"All the bark's loose, and turns round."

"Of course--it's an old twig, and it's wet.  When don't you mind
being alone?  You were saying something--'when you couldn't be
with'--something, or somebody."

"Oh--you know!  What's the use of my saying it?"  Lawrence kept his
eye on the twig.

"I don't know, and if I want you to say anything, that's the use,"
answered Fanny, whose prose style, so to say, was direct if it was
anything.

"Yes--but you see--I didn't mean anything in particular."  He broke
the twig in two and tossed it over the path into the brook below.

Fanny changed her position a little, leaning forward and clasping her
gloved hands round her knees.

"You're very nice, you know," she said meditatively.  "I like you."

"Because I don't answer your questions?" asked Lawrence, looking at
her face, which was half turned from him.

"Yes.  That's one of the reasons."

"It's a very funny one.  I don't see much reason in it, I confess."

"Don't you?  Don't you know that a woman sometimes likes a man for
what he doesn't say?"

"I never thought of it in that way.  I daresay you're right.  You
ought to know much better than I do.  Especially if you really like
me, as you say you do."

"Oh--I'm honest.  I never said I'd been in the navy!"  Fanny laughed.
"Besides, if I didn't like you, why should I say so?  Just to say
something civil?  The way Mr. Brinsley does?"

"Brinsley's a horror!  Don't talk about him--especially here."

"I don't mean to.  I hate him.  But if we were going to talk about
him, this would be a good place--one's sure that he's not just round
the corner of the verandah making one of my three cousins miserable."

"How do you mean?"

"Why--they all love him.  Can't you see it?  I don't mean
figuratively.  Not a bit.  They're in love with him, poor dears!"

"Nonsense! not really?" Lawrence laughed incredulously.

"Yes--really.  It's a rather dismal sort of love--they've kept their
hearts in pickle for such an age, you know--old pickles aren't good,
either.  I've no patience with old maids who fall in love and make
fools of themselves!"

"Perhaps they can't help it," suggested the young man.  "Nobody can
help falling in love, you know."

"No," answered Fanny, rather doubtfully.  "Perhaps not.  I don't
know.  It depends."

"People don't generally try to keep themselves from falling in love,"
remarked Lawrence, with the air of a philosopher.  "It's more apt to
be the other way.  They are generally trying to make some one else
fall in love with them.  That's the hard thing."

"Is it?"  Fanny smiled.  "Perhaps it is," she added, after a pause.
"I'd like to tell you something--"

She hesitated and stopped.  Lawrence looked at her, but did not
speak, expecting her to go on.  The silence continued for some time.
Once or twice Fanny turned and met his eyes, and her lips moved as
though she were just going to say something.  She seemed to be in
doubt.

"I don't believe in friendship, and I don't believe in promises,--and
I don't believe much in anything," she said at last, in magnificent
generalization.  "But I'd like to tell you, all the same.  Do you
mind?"

"I won't repeat it if you do," said Lawrence, simply.

"No--I don't believe you will.  You see I haven't any friends, so I
never tell things,--at least, not much.  I don't believe much in
telling, anyway.  Do you?"

"Not if you mean to keep a secret."

"Oh--well--this isn't exactly a secret--only I don't want any one to
know it.  Yes, I know!  You laugh because I'm going to tell you.  But
you're different, somehow--"

"Am I?"

"Oh yes,--you don't count!"

Lawrence's face fell a little at this last remark, and there was
silence again for a few moments.

"I'm not sure that I'll tell you, after all," said Fanny, at last.

The quiet lids were half closed over the grey eyes, and she seemed to
be thinking out something.  Lawrence was unconsciously wondering why
he did not think the white lashes ugly, especially when she had just
told him that he did not 'count.'

"Are you sure you won't tell?" asked the young girl, after another
long pause.

"If you don't want me to, of course I won't," answered Lawrence,
mechanically.

"It's a sort of confession," said Fanny.  "That's the reason why I
don't like to tell you.  It's cowardly to be afraid of confessing
that one's been an idiot, so I am going to do it at once and get it
over."

"It's a startling confession!" laughed Lawrence, softly.  "I don't
believe it.  Is that all?"

"If you laugh at me, I won't tell you anything more.  Then you'll be
sorry."

"Shall I?"

"Yes."

"All right!  I'm serious now," said Lawrence.

"Don't you want to smoke?" asked Fanny, suddenly.  "I wish you would.
I should be less--less nervous, you know."

"What a curious idea!  But I'll smoke if you like."

He proceeded to fill and light a big brier-root pipe.

"I like the smell of a pipe," said Fanny, watching the operation.
"I'm so tired of the everlasting cigarette."

"I'm ready," Lawrence said, puffing slowly into the still, hot air.

"Are you sure you won't laugh at me?  Well, I'll tell you.  I liked
Mr. Brinsley awfully--at first."

Lawrence looked at her quickly and took his pipe from his mouth.

"Not really?" he exclaimed, only half-interrogatively, but with a
change of colour.  "But then--well--I don't suppose you mean anything
particular by that," he added, to comfort himself.  "You don't mean
that you--"  He stopped.

Fanny nodded slowly, and the blush that rose in her face reddened her
sunny complexion.

"Yes.  That's what I mean.  I cared for him, you know,--that sort of
thing."

"It hasn't taken you long to get over it, at all events," answered
Lawrence, gravely, and wondering inwardly why she made the
extraordinary confession, seeing that it hurt him and could do her no
good.

"No--it hasn't taken long, has it?  That's what frightens me.  If I
weren't frightened, I shouldn't talk to you about it."

"I don't understand--why are you frightened?  Especially since you've
got over it.  I don't see--"

"I thought you might," said Fanny, enigmatically.

A long silence followed, this time.  Lawrence crossed his hands on
his knees as Fanny was doing, holding his pipe, which was going out.
They both sat staring at the opposite bank of the brook.

The vital loveliness of the still woods was all around them,
whispering in their young ears, breathing into their young nostrils
the breath of nature's life, caressing them with bountiful warmth.
They sat side by side, very near, staring at the opposite bank, and
for a long time no words passed their lips.  At last the young girl
spoke in a low and almost monotonous tone.

"He has an influence over people who come near him," she said.
"Besides, that kind of man appeals to me.  It's natural, isn't it?
I'm so fond of all sorts of things out-of-doors, that I can't help
admiring a man who can do everything so well.  And he's a splendid
creature.  You've never seen him ride.  You don't know--it's
wonderful!  I wish you could see him on that thoroughbred Teddy Van
De Water has brought up this summer--Teddy's a good rider, but he
can't do anything with the mare.  You ought to see Brinsley--Mr.
Brinsley--you'd understand better."

"But I understand perfectly, as it is," said Lawrence, rather
gloomily.

"Do you?  I wonder whether you really do.  Do you think there's
any--any excuse for me?"

The words were spoken in a faltering shamefaced way very unlike
Fanny's usual manner.

"As though you needed any excuse for taking a fancy to any one who
pleases you!" answered Lawrence, rather coldly.  "Aren't you
perfectly free to like anybody who turns up?"

During the pause which followed, he slowly relighted his pipe, which
had quite gone out by this time.

"I was afraid you wouldn't understand," said Fanny, in a disappointed
tone.

"But I do--"

"No--not what I mean.  I hate explaining things, but I shall have to."

Louis Lawrence wondered vaguely what there could be to explain, and,
if there were anything, why she should be so anxious to explain to
him in particular.




CHAPTER VIII.

"It was in this way," said Fanny.  "Mr. Brinsley brought a letter of
introduction from Cousin Frank.  You know who Frank is, don't you?
He's the brother of the three Miss Miners."

"Of course," nodded Lawrence.  "Everybody knows Frank Miner."

"And he knows everybody.  But he didn't say much in his note, and
Cordelia has written to him since, because she wants to know all
about Mr. Brinsley, and it appears that Frank has only met him once
or twice at a club, and doesn't know anything about him.  However, it
doesn't matter!  The main point is that he called the day after we
got here, and in twenty-four hours we were all in love with him."

"Please don't include yourself," said Lawrence, his delicate face
betraying that he winced.

"I will include myself, because it's true," answered Fanny, very much
in earnest.  "I shouldn't put it just in that way about myself,
perhaps,--but I took a fancy to him, and I took him to drive, and I
found that he could drive quite as well as I, and we went out riding
with a party, and he rides like an angel--he really does--it's
divine.  And then I tried him in the boat, and he was good at that.
So I began to like him very much."

"They're all excellent reasons for liking a man," observed Lawrence,
with a little contempt.

"Don't scoff at things you can't do yourself," said Fanny, severely.
"It's not in good taste.  Besides, I don't care.  All women admire
men who are stronger, and quicker, and better with their hands than
other men.  One always thinks they must be braver, too."

"Yes, that's true," assented Lawrence, seeking to retrieve himself by
meekness.

"And they generally are.  It takes courage to ride well, and it needs
nerve to handle a boat in a squall.  I don't mean to say that you
can't be brave if you don't know how to do those things.  That would
be nonsense.  You--for instance--you could learn.  Only nobody has
ever taught you anything, and you're getting old."

Lawrence laughed outright, and forgot his ill-humour in a moment.

"Oh--I don't mean really old," said Fanny, immediately.  "I only mean
that one ought to learn when one is a child, as I did.  Then it's no
trouble, you see--and one never forgets.  Now, Mr. Brinsley began
young--"

"Yes," interrupted the young man, "I should say so.  I'm sorry I
didn't."

"So am I.  It would have been so nice to do things--"

She stopped abruptly, and pulled up a blade of rank grass, which she
proceeded to twist thoughtfully round her finger.

"I shouldn't like you to think I was a flirt," she said, suddenly
turning her grey eyes upon him.

He met her glance curiously, being considerably surprised by her
remark.

"Because I sometimes think I am, myself," she added, still looking at
him.  "Do you think so?" she asked earnestly.  "What is a flirt,
anyway?"

"A woman who draws a man on for the pleasure of breaking his heart, I
suppose," answered Lawrence, keeping his eyes fixed intently on hers.

"Then I'm only half a flirt," said Fanny, "because I only draw a man
on, without meaning to break anybody's heart."

"Don't," said Lawrence.  "It hurts, you know."

"I wonder--"  The young girl laughed a little, and turned away from
his eyes.

"What?"

"Whether it really hurts."  She bit the end of the grass blade, and
slowly tore it with her teeth, looking dreamily across the brook.

"Don't try it, at all events."

"Mr. Brinsley doesn't seem to mind."

"Brinsley isn't a human being," said Lawrence, savagely.

"What is he, then?"

"A fraud--of some sort.  I don't care.  I hate him!"

"You're hard on Mr. Brinsley," observed Fanny, slowly, and watching
her companion sideways.

"Considering what you've been saying about him--"

"I said nothing about him except that I began by liking him awfully."

"Well--you left the rest to my imagination.  I did as well as I
could.  If you didn't hate him yourself, you'd hardly have been
telling me all this, would you?"

"Oh--I don't know.  I might be going to ask your advice about--about
him."

"Take him out in your boat and drown him," suggested Lawrence.
"That's my advice about him."

"What has he done to you, Mr. Lawrence?" enquired Fanny, gravely.
"Why do you hate him so?"

"Why?  It's plain enough, it seems to me--plain as a--what do you
call the thing?"

"Plain as a marlinespike, you mean.  Only it isn't.  I want to know
two things.  Do you think I'm a flirt?  And why do you want me to
murder poor, innocent Mr. Brinsley?  Do you mind answering?"

Lawrence's dark eyes began to gleam angrily.  He bit his pipe and
pulled at it, though it had gone out; then he took it from his lips
and answered deliberately.

"If you are a flirt, Miss Trehearne, I don't wish Brinsley any
further damage.  He'll do very well in your hands, I'm sure.  I have
no anxiety."

"I wouldn't hurt a fly," said Fanny.  "If I liked the fly," she added.

"I believe the spider said something to the same effect, when he
invited the fly into his parlour."

At this a dark flush rose in the girl's cheeks.

"You're rude, Mr. Lawrence," she said.

"I'm sorry, Miss Trehearne--but you're unkind, so you'll please to
excuse me."

Instead of flushing, as she did, Lawrence turned slowly pale, as was
his nature.

"Even if I were,--but I'm not,--that's no reason why you should be
rude."

"I didn't mean to be rude," answered Lawrence.  "I don't see what I
said that was so very dreadful."

"It was much worse than anything I said," retorted Fanny, biting her
blade of grass again.  "Because I didn't say anything at all, you
know.  Oh, well--if you'll say you're sorry, we'll bury it."

"I'm sorry," said Lawrence, without the least show of contrition.

"I was going to tell you such lots of things about myself," said the
young girl.  "You've made me forget them all.  What was I talking
about when we began to fight?  I began by saying that I liked you,
and you've been horrid ever since.  I won't say that again, at all
events."

"Excuse me--you began by saying that you'd liked Brinsley--liked him
awfully, you said.  It must have been awful--anything connected with
Brinsley is necessarily awful."

"There you go again.  Don't bolt so--it makes bad running.  I told
you why I'd liked him so much at first, and you admitted that it was
natural.  Do you remember that?  Well--that isn't all.  After I liked
him, I began to care for him.  I told you that, too.  Horrid of me,
wasn't it?"

"Horrid!"

"I wish you wouldn't agree with me all the time!" exclaimed Fanny,
impatiently.  "You know I really did care--a little.  And then one
day in the catboat, he asked me--" She stopped and looked at Lawrence.

"To marry you?  Why don't you say it?  It wouldn't surprise me a bit."

"No," said Fanny, slowly, "he didn't ask me to marry him."

"In Heaven's name, what did he ask you?" enquired Lawrence,
exasperated to impatience.

"Oh--I don't know.  It was something about the channel between Bar
and Sheep, I believe.  Nothing very important, anyway.  I'm not sure
that I could remember, if I tried."

"Then--excuse me, but what's the point?"

"Oh--I know!" exclaimed Fanny, as though suddenly recollecting
something.  "Not that it matters much, but I like to be accurate.  It
was about the bell buoy off Sheep Porcupine.  You know, I showed it
to you the other day.  Well--I told him how it had been carried away
in a storm some time ago, and that this was a new one.  And the next
day I heard him telling Augusta all about it, as though he had known
before, you see."

"Well--that wasn't exactly a crime," observed Lawrence, who could not
understand at all.  "You'd told him--"

"Yes, but he said he remembered the old one.  That was impossible, as
he hadn't known anything about it.  It was a little slip, but it made
me open my eyes and watch him.  I used to think he was perfection
until then."

"Oh, I see!  That was when you first began to find out that he wasn't
quite straight."

"Exactly.  It made all the difference.  I've caught him out more than
once since then.  The other night, it was too much for me, when he
talked about the navy--so I promptly smashed him.  He knows that I
know, now."

"I should think so.  All the same--I don't mean to be rude this time,
Miss Trehearne--

"Be careful!"

"No--I'll risk it.  Just now when you said he had 'asked you'--you
stopped short.  You knew I should believe that you had been going to
say that he had asked you to marry him, didn't you?"

"Oh, I know!  I couldn't help it--I believe I really am a flirt,
after all."

"I shouldn't like to believe it," said Lawrence, gravely.

"Nor I--either.  I only wanted to see how you'd look if you thought
he'd offered himself just then."

"Just then!  Do you mean to say that he has offered himself at any
other time?"

"Now you're rude again--only, I forgive you, because you don't know
that you are.  It's rude to ask such questions--so I'll be polite and
refuse to answer.  Not that there's any good reason why he shouldn't
have asked me to marry him, you know.  The fact that you hate him
isn't a reason."

"But you do, yourself--"

"Not at all.  At least, I haven't said so.  I wish you'd listen to
me, Mr. Lawrence, instead of interrupting me with questions every
other moment.  How in the world am I to make a confession, if you
won't let me say two words?"

"Are you going to make a confession?" asked Lawrence, incredulously.
"It's all chaff, you know!"

Fanny turned her cool eyes upon him instantly.

"There's a lot besides chaff," she said, in a very different tone.
"I can be in earnest, too--when I care."

She certainly emphasized the last three words in a way which might
have meant much, accompanied as they were by her steady look.
Lawrence felt himself growing a little pale again.

"Do you care?" he asked, and his voice shook perceptibly.

"For Mr. Brinsley?" enquired Fanny, instantly changing her tone again
and beginning to laugh.

"No--for me."

"For you!  Oh dear, what a question!"  She laughed outright.

Lawrence leaned down and knocked the ashes out of his pipe against
the toe of his heavy walking-shoe without saying a word.  Then he put
the pipe into his pocket.  She watched him.

"You've no right to be angry this time," she said.  "But you are."

The young man faced her quietly and waited a moment before he spoke.

"You're playing with me," he said, calmly and without emphasis, as
stating a fact.

"Of course I am!" laughed Fanny Trehearne.  "What did you expect?
But I'm sorry that you've found it out," she added, with appalling
cynicism.  "It won't be fun any more."

"Unless we both play," suggested Lawrence, who had either recovered
his temper very quickly, or possessed a better control over it than
Fanny had supposed.

"All right!" she exclaimed cheerfully.  "Let's play--let us play.
That sounds solemn, somehow--I wonder why?  Oh--of course--it's like
'Let us pray' in church."

Lawrence laughed drily.

"Let us pray beforehand, for the one who gets the worst of it," he
said.  "He or she will need it.  But I shall win at the game, you
know.  That's a foregone conclusion."

Fanny was surprised and amused at the confidence he suddenly
affected--very unlike his habitual modesty and self-effacement.

"You seem pretty sure of yourself," she answered.  "What shall the
forfeit be, as they say in the children's games?"

"To marry or not to marry, at the discretion of the winner.  I think
that's fair, don't you?  I shouldn't like to propose anything
serious--the head of Roger Brinsley in a charger, for instance."

Fanny laughed again.

"Yes, it's all very well!" she protested.  "But of course the one who
loses will be in earnest, and the one who wins will not."

"He may be, by that time," suggested Lawrence.

"Don't say 'he,' so confidently--I mean to win.  Besides, are we
starting fair?  Of course I don't care an atom for you, but don't you
care for me--just a little?"

"I!" exclaimed Lawrence.  "What an idea!"  He laughed quite as
naturally as Fanny herself.  "Do you think that a man in love would
propose such a game as we are talking about?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know what to think," answered the young girl.
"Perhaps I shall know in a day or two."

She looked down, quite grave again, and pulled a bit of fern from the
bank, and crushed it in her hand, and then smelled it.

"Don't you like sweet fern?" she asked, holding it out to him.  "I
love it!"

"That's why you crush it, I suppose," said Lawrence.

"It doesn't smell sweet unless you do.  Oh--I see!  You were
beginning to play the game.  Very well.  Why should we lose time
about it?  But I wish it were a little better defined.  What is it
we're going to do?  Won't you explain?  I'm so stupid about these
things.  Are we going to flirt for a bet?"

"What a speech!"

"Because it's a plain one?  Is that why you object to it?  After all,
that's what we said."

"We only said we'd play," answered Lawrence.  "Whichever ends by
caring must agree to marry the winner, if required.  But I'm afraid
the time is too short," he added, more gravely.  "I've only a week
more."

"Only a week!" exclaimed Fanny, in a tone of disappointment.  "Why, I
thought there was ever so much more.  That isn't nearly time enough."

"We must play faster--and hope for 'situations,' as they call them on
the stage."

"Oh--the situation is bad enough, as it is," answered the young girl,
with a change of manner that surprised her companion.  "If you only
knew!"

"Was that what you were going to tell me about?" asked Lawrence,
quickly, and with renewed interest.  "I thought you were making game
of me."

"That's the trouble!  You'll never believe that I'm in earnest, now.
That's the worst of practical jokes.  Come along!  We must be going
home.  The sun's behind the hill and ever so low, I'm sure.  We
shan't get home before dusk.  How sweet that fern smells!  Give it
back to me, won't you?"

They rose and began to walk homeward in the warm shadow of the woods.
As before, Fanny went first along the narrow path, and Lawrence,
following close behind her, and watching the supple grace of her as
she moved, breathed in also the intoxicating perfume of the aromatic
sweet fern which she still carried in her hand.




CHAPTER IX.

On the following afternoon Fanny Trehearne announced her intention of
riding with Mr. Brinsley.

"I'd take you, too," she said to Lawrence, with a singularly cold
stare.  "Only as you can't ride much, you wouldn't enjoy it, you
know."

"Certainly not," answered Lawrence, returning her glance with all
coolness.  "I shouldn't enjoy it at all."

"You might take my cousins out in the boat, instead."

"Are they tired of life?" enquired the young man, smiling.  "No.  I
want to make a sketch in the woods.  I'll go out by myself, thank
you."

"Do you mean to sketch the place where we stopped yesterday?"

"Oh no--I'm going in quite another direction.  I can't exactly
explain where it is, because I've such a bad memory for names of
roads, and all that.  But I can find it."

Miss Cordelia Miner looked up from the magazine she was reading.

"You're not going to ride alone with Mr. Brinsley, are you?" she
asked suddenly.

"Why not?" asked Fanny.  "I don't see any reason why I shouldn't,
It's safer than riding alone, isn't it?"

"I confess, I don't like the idea," said Miss Cordelia.  "It looks as
though there were something."

"Something of what kind?" Fanny watched Lawrence's face.

"Something--well--not really an engagement--but--"

"Well--why shouldn't I be engaged to Mr. Brinsley, if I like?"
enquired the young girl, arching her brows.

"Why, Fanny!  I'm surprised!"  And, indeed, Miss Miner seemed so, for
she almost sprang out of her chair.

"I don't know why you need be horrified, though," returned Fanny,
calmly.  "Should you be shocked if any one said that you were engaged
to Mr. Brinsley?  What's the matter with him, anyway?" she demanded,
dropping into her favourite slang.  "You'd be proud to be engaged to
him--so would Elizabeth--so would Augusta!  Then why shouldn't I be
proud if I can get him?  I'm sure, he's awfully good-looking, and he
rides--like an angel."

"An angel jockey," suggested Lawrence, without a smile.

"Not at all!" exclaimed Fanny.  "He rides like a gentleman and not in
the least like a jockey."

Miss Cordelia had risen from her chair, and turned her back on the
young people.

"You've no right to say such things to me, Fanny," she said, going
slowly towards the window.  Her voice shook.

The young girl saw that she was deeply hurt, and followed her quickly.

"I didn't mean to be horrid!" said Fanny, penitently.  "I was only
laughing, you know, and of course I shall take Stebbins.  And I'm not
engaged to Mr. Brinsley at all."

"Why didn't you say so at once?" asked Cordelia, half choking, and
turning away her face.

Fanny, unseen by her cousin, glanced at Lawrence, and then at the
door, and the young man departed immediately, leaving the two cousins
to make peace.

He did not remain long in the house.  Thrusting a sketch-book and a
pencil into his pocket, with his pipe and pouch, he went out without
seeing Fanny again, taking her at her word with regard to her plans
for the afternoon.  An hour later, he was seated under a tree high
upon the side of the hill and almost out of sight of the Otter Cliff
road.  There was nothing particular in the way of a view from that
point, but there were endless trees, and Lawrence amused himself in
making a rough study of a mixed group of white pines, firs, and
hackmatacks.

He did not draw very carefully, nor even industriously, and more than
once he stopped working altogether for a quarter of an hour at a
time.  His principal object in coming had been to get out of the way
just a little more promptly and completely than Fanny could have
expected.  His thoughts were much more concerned with her than with
what he was doing.

Naturally enough, he was trying to understand the real bent of the
girl's feelings.  Setting aside the absurd chaff which had formed a
good deal of the conversation on the previous afternoon, he tried to
extract from it enough of truth to guide him, aiding himself by
recalling little circumstances as well as words, for the one had
often belied the other.

He saw clearly that Fanny Trehearne might have said to him, 'I like
you, but I do not love you--win me if you can!'   But it was like her
to propose to 'flirt for a bet'--being at heart perhaps less of a
flirt than she laughingly admitted herself to be.  But that was not
the point which chiefly interested him.  What he wished to know was,
just how far that undefined liking for him extended.  To speak in the
common phrase, he did not 'know where he was' with her, and it seemed
that he had no means of finding out.  On the other hand, he knew very
well indeed that he himself was badly in love.  The symptoms were not
to be mistaken, nor had he been in love so often already as to make
him sceptical as to what he felt.  He was more distrustful of the
result than of the impulse.

In his opinion Fanny was much too frank to be a flirt.  Her
directness was one of her principal charms, though he could not help
suspecting that it must be one of her chief weapons.  A little
hesitation is often less deceptive than clear-eyed, outspoken truth.
But Lawrence was no more able than most men of his age--or, indeed,
of any age--to follow out a continuous train of thought where a woman
was concerned.  It is more often the woman's personality that
concerns us, unreasoning men, than the probable direction of her own
reasoning about us.  We do not make love to an argument, so to speak,
nor to a set of ideas, nor to a preconceived opinion of our merits or
demerits.  We make love to our own idea of what the woman is--and the
depth of our disillusionment is the measure of our sincerity, when
love is gasping between the death-blow and the death.

Moreover, what is called nowadays analysis of human nature, belongs
in reality to transcendental thought.  'Transcendent' is defined as
designating that which lies beyond the bounds of all possible
experience.  So far as we know, it is beyond those bounds to enter
into the intelligence of our neighbour, subjectively, to identify
ourselves with him and to see and understand the world with his eyes
and mind.  It follows that we are never sure of what we are doing
when we attempt to set down exactly another man's train of thought,
and it follows also that few are willing to recognize the result as
at all resembling the process of which they are conscious within
themselves.  On certain bases, all men can appeal subjectively to all
men, and all women to all women.  But, as between the sexes, all
observation is objective and tentative, whether it be that of the
author, condemned to analyze a woman's character, or that of the man
in love and attempting to understand the woman he loves.

And further, if we could see--as it is pretended by some that we can
see on paper--precisely what is taking place in the intelligence of
those we meet in the world, our friends would be as unrecognizable to
us as a dissected man is unrecognizable for a human being except in
the eyes of a doctor.  The soul, laid bare, dissected, and turned
inside out, with real success, would not be recognized by its dearest
friend, were it ever so truthful a soul.  We are all fundamentally
and totally incapable of expressing exactly what we feel, and as we
have no means of conveying truth without some sort of expression, we
are helpless and are all more or less hopelessly misunderstood--a
fact to which, if we please, we may ascribe that variety which is
proverbially said to be the charm of life.  Doubtless, this is a
literary heresy; but it is a human truth a little above literature.

Lawrence had never attempted to write a book, but as he sat on the
slope above the Otter Cliff road, drawing trees, it did not occur to
him to draw a picture of what he thought about the inside of each
tree, instead of a representation of what he saw.  But he made the
usual fruitless attempt to understand the woman he loved, and to
reason about her, and failed to do either, which is also usual.  The
conclusion he reached was that he loved her, of which he had been
aware before he had set himself to think it out.

What he saw was a strong girl's face with cool, inscrutable grey eyes
that never took fire and gleamed, nor ever turned dull and vacant.
Their unchanging steadiness contradicted the wayward speech, the
sudden capricious confidence, even the gay laugh, sometimes.
Lawrence had a lively impression that whatever Fanny said or did, she
never meant but one thing, whatever that might be.  And with this
impression he was obliged to content himself.

From the place where he sat, he had a glimpse between the trees of
the road below.  On the side towards him there was a little open bit
of meadow, where the gorge widened, and a low fence with a little
ditch separated it from the highway.  On the hillside, above this
stretch of grass, the trees grew here and there, wide apart at first,
and then by degrees more close together.  He himself was seated just
within the thick wood, at the edge of the first underbrush.

Now and then, people passed along the road: a light buckboard drawn
by a pair of bays and containing a smart-looking couple, with no
groom behind; a farmer's wagon, long, hooded, and dusty, dragged at a
disjointed trot by a broken-down grey horse; a solitary rider, whose
varnished shoes reflected the sunlight even to where Lawrence was
sitting; a couple of pedestrians; a lad driving a cow; and then
another buckboard; and so on.

Lawrence was thinking of shutting up his book and climbing higher up
the steep side of New Port Mountain--as the hill is called--in search
of another study, when, glancing down through the trees, he saw three
riders coming slowly along the road--two in front, and one at some
distance behind--a lady and gentleman and then a groom.  His eyes
were good, and he would have known Fanny Trehearne's figure and
bearing even at a greater distance.  She sat so straight--hands down,
elbows in, head high, square in her saddle, yet flexible, and all
moving with every movement of her Kentucky thoroughbred.  They came
nearer, and Lawrence saw them distinctly now.  Brinsley was beside
her.  Lawrence laughed to himself at the idea that the man could ever
have been in the Marines.  He sat the horse he rode much more like a
Mexican or an Indian than like a sailor or a marine.  Even at that
distance Lawrence could not help admiring his really magnificent
figure, for Brinsley's perfections were showy and massed well afar
off.

The riders reached the point where the little meadow spread out on
their left, and to Lawrence's surprise, they halted and seemed to be
consulting about something.  They had turned towards him, and as they
talked, he could see that Fanny looked across the meadow and up at
the woods where he was sitting.  It was of course utterly impossible
that she should have known where he was, and it was almost incredible
that she should see him, seated low upon the ground in the deep
shade, when she was only visible to him between the stems of the
trees.  Nevertheless, not caring to be discovered, he crouched down
amongst the ferns and grasses, still keeping his eye on the couple in
the road far below.

Presently he saw Fanny turn her horse's head, walk him to the other
side of the road, and turn again, facing the meadow.  She looked up
and down the road once, saw that no one was coming, and put her mare
at the fence.  It was a low one, and the ditch on the outer side was
neither broad nor deep.  The thoroughbred cleared it with a
contemptuously insignificant effort, and cantered a few strides
forward into the grass, shaking her bony head almost between her
knees as Fanny brought her to a stand and turned again.  Brinsley
followed her on the big Hungarian horse he rode,--Mr. Trehearne's
horse,--jumping the fence and ditch, and taking them again almost
immediately, to wait for Fanny on the other side in the road.  She
followed again, and pulled up by his side.  But they did not ride on
at once.  They seemed to be discussing some point connected with the
place, for they pointed here and there with their hands as they
spoke.  Fanny reined in her mare and backed a little, as though she
were going to jump again.  The animal seemed nervous, stamping and
pawing, and laying back her small ears.

A hundred yards or more in the direction from which they had come the
road made a short bend round the foot of the spur of the hill, known
as Pickett's.  Just as Fanny put the mare at the fence a third time,
a coach and four turned the corner of the road at a smart pace,
leaders cantering and wheelers at a long trot.

Seeing three horses apparently halting in the way, some one in the
coach sent a terrific and discordant blast from a post-horn ringing
along the road as a warning.  At that moment Fanny's mare was rising
at the bars.  She cleared them as easily as ever, but on reaching the
ground instantly bolted across the grass, head down, ears back, heels
flying.  It all happened in a moment.  The two men, Brinsley and
groom, knew too much to scare the thoroughbred by a pursuit, and
confident in Fanny's good riding, sat motionless on their horses in
the road, after drawing away enough to let the coach pass.

The idiot with the horn continued to blow fiercely, and the big
vehicle came swinging along at a great rate, with clattering of
hoofs, for the road was hard and dry, baked after a recent rain--and
with jingling of harness and sound of voices.  The mare grew more and
more frightened, and tore up the hillside like a flash, directly away
from the noise.  The young girl was a first-rate rider and knew the
fearful danger, if she should be carried at such a pace amongst the
trees.  But her strength, great as it was, for a woman, was not able
to produce the slightest impression upon the terrified creature she
rode.

Lawrence knew nothing of riding, but the imminent peril of the woman
he loved was clear to him in a moment.  He had a horrible vision of
the wild-eyed mare tearing straight towards him through the
trees--wide apart at first, and then dangerously near together.

On they came, the thoroughbred swerving violently at one stem after
another--the young girl's strong figure swaying to her balance at
each headlong movement.  He could see her set face, pale under the
tan, and he could see the desperate exertion of her strength.  He
sprang forward and ran down between the trees at the top of his speed.




CHAPTER X.

There is nothing equal to the absolute fearlessness of a naturally
brave man who has no experience of the risk he runs and is bent on
saving the life of the woman he loves.  Louis Lawrence remembered
afterwards what he had done and how he had done it, but he was
unconscious of what he was doing at the time.

He rushed down the hill between the closer trees, and with utter
recklessness sprang at the bridle as the infuriated mare dashed past
him.  Grasping snaffle and curb--tight drawn as they were--in both
hands, he threw all his light weight upon them and allowed himself to
be dragged along the ground between the trees at the imminent risk of
his life--a risk so terrible that Fanny Trehearne turned paler for
him than for her own danger.  In half a dozen more strides they might
both have been killed.  But the mare stopped, quivering, tried to
rear, but could not lift Lawrence far from the ground nor shake off
his desperate hold, plunged once and again, and then stood quite
still, trembling violently.  Lawrence scrambled to his feet, still
holding the bridle, and promptly placed himself in front of the mare.

For one breathless instant, Lawrence looked into Fanny's face, and
neither spoke nor moved.  Both were still very pale.  Then the young
girl slipped off, the reins in her hand.

"That was uncommonly well done," she said, with great calm.  "You've
saved my life."

She no longer looked at him while she spoke, but patted and stroked
the thoroughbred, looking her over with a critical eye.

"Oh--that's all right," answered Lawrence.  "Don't mention it!"

He laughed nervously, still panting from his violent exertion.  Fanny
herself was not out of breath, but the colour did not come back to
her sunburnt cheeks at once, and her hand was hardly steady yet.  She
did not laugh with Lawrence, nor even smile, but she looked long into
his eyes.

"I may not mention it, but I shan't forget it," she said slowly.

"It's one to me, isn't it?" asked Lawrence, who, in reality, was by
far the cooler and more collected of the two.

"How do you mean?" enquired Fanny, knitting her brows half-angrily.

"One to me--in our game, you know," said the young fellow.  "The game
we agreed to play, yesterday."

"Yes--it's one to you.  By the bye--you're not hurt anywhere, are
you?"

She looked him over, as she had looked over her mare, with the same
critical glance.  His clothes were a little torn, here and there,
being but light summer things, and his hat had disappeared, but it
was tolerably clear that he was in no way injured.

"Oh, I'm all right," he answered cheerfully.  "I should think you'd
feel badly shaken, though," he added, with sudden anxiety.

"Not at all," said Fanny, determined to show no more emotion or
excitement than he.  "It was a case of sitting still--neck or
nothing.  It's nothing, as it happens."

At that moment Brinsley appeared, riding slowly through the trees,
for fear of frightening the mare again.

"Are you hurt?" he shouted.

Fanny looked round, saw him, and shook her head, with a smile.
Brinsley trotted up and sprang from his horse.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" he asked again.

"Not in the least!"

"Thank God!" ejaculated Brinsley, with emphasis.

"You'd better thank Mr. Lawrence, too," observed Fanny, quietly.  "He
caught her going at a gallop, and hung on and was dragged.  I don't
remember ever seeing anything quite so plucky."

Brinsley looked coldly at his rival, and his beady eyes seemed nearer
together than usual when he spoke to him.

"I think you're quite as much to be congratulated as Miss Trehearne,"
he said.

"Thanks."

"We'd better be getting down to the road again," said Fanny.  "You
can lead the mare and your own horse, too, Mr. Brinsley.  She's quiet
enough now, and I've all I can do to walk in these things."

Brinsley took the mare's bridle over her head and led the way with
the two horses.

"Aren't you coming?" asked Fanny, seeing that Lawrence did not follow.

"Thanks--no," he answered.  "I must find my hat, in the first place."

Brinsley looked over his shoulder, and saw the two hanging back.  He
stopped a moment, turning, and laying one hand on the mare's nose.

"You must be shaken, Mr. Lawrence," he said.  "Why don't you take the
groom's horse and ride home with us?"

"I can't ride," answered the younger man, loud enough for Brinsley to
hear him.  "And you know it perfectly well," he added under his
breath.

Fanny frowned, but took no further notice of the remark.

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand to Lawrence.  "Come home
as soon as you can, won't you?"

"Oh yes--that is, I think I'll just see you take that fence again,
and then I want to get a little higher up the hill and do another bit
of a sketch.  Then I'll come home.  There's no hurry, is there?"

"Don't show off," said Fanny, severely.  "It isn't pretty.  Good-bye."

She walked fast and overtook Brinsley in a few moments.  At the foot
of the hill he prepared to mount her, leaving his own horse to the
groom.  Then a thing happened which he was never able to explain,
though he was an expert in the field and no one could mount a lady
better than he, of all Fanny's acquaintances.  He bent his knee and
held out his hand and stiffened his back and made the necessary
effort just at the right moment, as he very well knew.  But for some
inexplicable reason Fanny did not reach the saddle, nor anywhere near
it, and she slipped and would certainly have fallen if he had not
caught her with his other hand and held her on her feet.

"How awkward you are!" she exclaimed viciously, with a little stamp.
"Let me get on alone!"

And thereupon, to his astonishment and mortification, she pushed him
aside, set her foot in the stirrup,--for she was very tall and could
do it easily,--and was up in a flash.  Lawrence, looking down at them
from the edge of the woods, saw what happened, and so did Stebbins,
the groom, who grinned in silence.  He hated Brinsley, and it is a
bad sign when a good servant hates his master's guest.  Lawrence felt
that in addition to scoring one in the game, he was avenged on his
enemy for the latter's taunting invitation to ride.

"I think I may count that, and mark two.  I'm sure she did it on
purpose," he said audibly to himself.

Before Brinsley was mounted, Fanny was over the fence with her mare
and waiting for him in the road.

"Oh, come along!" she cried, "Don't be all day getting on!"

"You needn't be so tremendously rough on a fellow," said Brinsley, as
his horse landed in the road.  "It wasn't my fault that I wasn't
waiting for a runaway under the trees up there."

"Yes it was!  Everything's your fault," answered Fanny, emphatically.
"No--you needn't play Orlando Furioso and make papa's old
rocking-horse waltz like that.  My mare's got to walk a mile, at
least, for her nerves."

It didn't require Brinsley's great natural penetration to tell him
that Miss Fanny Trehearne was in the very worst of tempers--even to
the point of unfairly calling her papa's sturdy Hungarian bad names.
But he could not at all see why she should be so angry.  It had
certainly been her fault if he had failed to put her neatly in the
saddle.  But her ill-humour did not frighten him in the least, though
he was very quiet for several minutes after she had last spoken.

"It's not wildly gay to ride with people who don't talk," observed
Fanny.

"I was trying to think of something appropriate to say," answered
Brinsley.  "But you're in such an awful rage--"

"Am I?  I didn't know it.  What makes you think so?"

"What nerves you've got!" exclaimed Brinsley, in a tone of admiration.

"I haven't any nerves at all."

"I mean good nerves."

"I tell you I haven't any nerves.  Why do you talk about nerves?
They're not amusing things to have, are they?"

"Well--in point of humour--I didn't say they were."

"I asked you to say something amusing, and you began talking about
nerves," said Fanny, in explanation.

"I'm not in luck to-day," said Brinsley, after a pause.

"No--you're not," was the answer; but she did not vouchsafe him a
glance.

"I wish you'd like me," he said boldly.

"I do--at a certain distance.  You look well in the landscape--and
you know it."

"Upon my word!"  Brinsley laughed roughly, and looked between his
horse's ears.

"Upon your word--what?"

"I never had anything said to me quite equal to that, Miss Trehearne."

"No?  I'm surprised.  Perhaps you haven't known the right sort of
people.  You must find the truth refreshing."

Brinsley waited a few moments before speaking, and then, turning his
head, looked at her with great earnestness.

"I wish you'd tell me why you've taken such a sudden dislike to me,"
he said in a low voice.

"Why are you so anxious to know, Mr. Brinsley?" asked Fanny, meeting
his eyes quietly.

"Because I believe that somebody has been saying disagreeable things
about me to you," he answered.  "If that's the case, it would be fair
to give me a chance, you know."

"Nobody's been talking against you.  You've talked against yourself.
Besides," she added, her face suddenly clearing, "it's quite absurd
to make such a fuss about nothing!  I'm only angry about nothing at
all.  It's my way, you know.  You mustn't mind.  I'll get over it
before we're at home, and then I'll go off, and my cousins will give
you lots of weak tea and flattery."

Brinsley, who was clever at most things, was not good at talking nor
at understanding a woman's moods, and he felt himself at so great a
disadvantage that he slipped into an inane conversation about people
and parties without succeeding in finding out what he wished to know.
If he had ever conceived any mad hope of winning Fanny's affections,
he abandoned it then and there.  He was still further handicapped,
had Fanny known it, by the desperate state of his own affairs at that
moment; and if she had known something of his reflexions, she might
have pitied him a little--what she might have thought, if she had
guessed the remainder, is hard to guess, for he had a very curious
scheme in his mind for improving his finances.  He had been playing
high for some time, had lost steadily, and was at the end of his
present resources, which, with him, meant that he was at the end of
all he had in the world.

He was not by any means inclined to give up the pleasant intimacy he
had formed and fostered with the three Miss Miners, nor the attendant
luxuries which he had gained with it, and the introduction to Bar
Harbour society, which meant good society elsewhere.  But he felt
that he had no choice, since the cards went against him.  He was not
a sharper.  He played fair, for the sake of the enjoyment of the
thing.  It was his one great passion.  When he was in luck he won
enough for his extravagant needs, for he always played high, on
principle.  But when fortune foiled him, he had other talents of a
more curious description, by the exercise of which to replenish his
purse--talents, too, which he had exercised in America for a long
time.  His happy hunting-ground was really London, which accounted
for his evident and almost extraordinary familiarity with its ways.
There are indeed few places in the world where a man may follow a
doubtful occupation more freely and more successfully.

Before they reached the Trehearnes' house, Brinsley had made up his
mind that he must drink his last cup of tea with the three Miss
Miners on that day or very soon afterwards, unless he were to be even
more fortunate in his undertaking than he dared to expect.  The
immediate consequence was an affectation of a sad and stately manner
towards Fanny as he helped her off her mare at the door.

"I'm afraid this has been our last ride," he said, in a subdued voice.

"What?  Oh--'The Last Ride'--Browning--I remember," answered Fanny.

"No--I wasn't alluding to Browning.  I'm going away very soon."

Fanny stared at him in some surprise.

"Oh!  Are you?  I am very sorry."  She spoke cheerfully, and led the
way into the house, Brinsley following her, with a dejected air.
"You'll probably find my cousins in the library," she added.  "I'm
going to take off my hat--it's so hot."

The three Miss Miners were assembled, as usual at that hour, and
greeted Brinsley effusively.  Not wishing to be anticipated by Fanny
in telling a story altogether to Lawrence's credit, he began to tell
the three ladies of what had happened during the ride.  He was very
careful to explain that he had of course not dared to follow the
run-away, lest he should have made matters much worse.

"It's quite dreadful," cried Miss Cordelia, on hearing of Fanny's
narrow escape.  "You should never have let her jump the fence at all.
What do people do such mad things for!"

"If anything happened to the child, we might as well kill ourselves,"
said Elizabeth.  "It's too dreadful to think of!"

"Well," answered Brinsley, "nothing has happened, you see.  I've
brought Miss Trehearne safe home, though I hadn't the good fortune to
be the man who stopped her horse.  You see," he added, smiling, "I
want all the credit you can spare from Mr. Lawrence.  I'm afraid
there's not much to be got, though.  He's had the lion's share."

"And where is he?" asked Augusta, who felt more sympathy for the
artist than the others.

"Oh--he'll come back.  He can't ride, you know, so he had to walk,
poor fellow!  He'd been pretty badly shaken, too, and he's not
strong, I'm sure."

"You wouldn't have called him weak if you'd seen him hanging on while
the mare dragged him," said Fanny, who had entered unnoticed.

"Oh, that's only strength in the hands!" said Brinsley, in a
depreciative tone, and conscious of his own splendid proportions.

"Well, then, he's strong in the hands, that's all," retorted Fanny.
"Please, some tea, Elizabeth dear--I'm half dead."

The three Miss Miners did their best to console Brinsley for Fanny's
continued ill-treatment of him, but they did not succeed in lifting
the cloud from his brow.  At last he confessed that he was expecting
to leave Bar Harbour at any moment.




CHAPTER XI.

There were to be fireworks that evening at the Canoe Club on the
farther side of Bar Island--magnificent fireworks, it was said, which
it would be well worth while to see.  The night was calm and clear,
and the moon, being near the last quarter, would not rise until
everything was over.

"We'll go in skiffs," said Fanny.  "When we're tired of each other,
we can change about, you know.  Mr. Lawrence can take one of us and
Mr. Brinsley another, and the other two must take one of the men from
the landing.  I ordered the boats this morning when I was out."

The three Miss Miners looked consciously at one another, mutely
wondering how they were to divide Mr. Brinsley amongst them, and
wishing that they had consulted together in private before the moment
for decision had come.  But no one suggested that, as there were only
four ladies, each of the men could very easily take two in a boat.

"We might toss up to see who shall take whom," suggested Brinsley,
who had been unusually silent during the greater part of dinner.

"In how many ways can you arrange six people in couples?" asked Fanny.

Nobody succeeded in solving the question, of course.  Even Elizabeth
Miner, who was considered the clever member, gave it up in despair.

"Never mind!" said Fanny.  "We'll see how it turns out when we get
down to the landing-stage.  These things always arrange themselves."

To the surprise of every one except Fanny herself, the arrangement
turned out to be such that she and Miss Cordelia went together in the
skiff pulled by the sailor, while Brinsley and Lawrence each took one
of the other Miss Miners.

"We'll change by and by," said Fanny, as her boat shoved off first to
show the way.  "Keep close to us in the crowd when we get over."

The distance from the landing, across the harbour, through the
channel between Bar Island and Sheep Porcupine to the Canoe Club, is
little over half a mile; but at night, amidst a crowd of steamers,
large and small, row-boats, canoes, and sail-boats,--the latter all
outside the channel,--it took twenty minutes to reach the place where
the fireworks were to be.

Fanny leaned back beside her cousin, and watched the lights in
silence.  Yellow, green, and red, they streamed across the brilliant
black water in every direction, the yellow rays fixed or moving but
slowly, the others gliding along swiftly above their own reflection,
as the paddle steamers thrashed their way through the still sea.  To
left and right the shadowy islands loomed, darkly against the black
sky, outlined by the stars.  The warm damp air lifted the coolness
from the water in little puffs, as the skiff slipped along.  Now and
then, in the gloom, a boat showed dimly alongside, and the laughing
voices of girls and boys told how near it passed, a mere floating
dimness upon blackness.  The stroke of light sculls swished and
tinkled with the laughter.  The soft mysterious charm of the summer
dark was breathed upon land and water--the distant lights were
love-dreaming eyes, and each time, as the oars dipped, swept and
rose, the gentle sound was like a stolen kiss.

Then, suddenly, with a wild screaming rush, a rocket shot up into the
night, splitting the sky with a scar of fire.  The burning point of
it lingered a moment overhead, then cracked into little stars that
shed a soft glow through the gloom, and fell in a swift shower of
sparks.  Then all was hushed again, and the red and green lights
moved quickly over the water, hither and thither.

Close to the shore of the island the skiff ran round the point into
the shallow water along the beach, and all at once in the distance
the festooned lanterns of the Canoe Club came into view, so bright
that one could distinguish the branches of the spruces in the red and
yellow glare, and the moving crowd of people on the little
landing-stage and below, before the clubhouse.  And some two hundred
yards out the lights began again, gleaming from hundreds of boats and
little vessels of all rigs and builds.  Between these seaward lights
and those on land a deep black void stretched away up Frenchman's Bay.

Miss Cordelia started nervously at the rockets, but said nothing.
Fanny sat beside her in silence.  The sailor, only visible distinctly
when the lights were behind him, pulled softly and steadily, glancing
over his shoulder every now and then to see that the way was clear.
The other skiffs kept near, both Brinsley and Lawrence being keenly
on the lookout for a change.  Now and then Fanny could hear them
talking.

"I wonder why one voice should attract one and another should be
disagreeable," she said at last, in a meditative tone.

"I was thinking of the same thing," answered Cordelia, thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Fanny, absently.  "Of course you were," she added, a
moment later.  "I mean--"  She paused.  "Poor dear!" she exclaimed at
last, stroking her cousin's elderly hand in the dark.  "I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, dear," answered Miss Miner, simply and gratefully.

It was little enough, but little as it was it made them both more
silent than ever.  With the boatman close before them, it was
impossible to talk of what was in their thoughts.  Fanny, for her
part, was glad of it.  She had understood her old-maid cousin since
the night when Cordelia had broken down and laughed and cried in the
garden, and she knew how little there could be to say.  But Cordelia
did not understand Fanny in the least.  It was a marvel to her that
any one should prefer Lawrence to Brinsley--almost as great a marvel
as that she herself, in her sober middle age, should have felt what
she knew was love and believed to be passion.

And now, Brinsley was going, and it was over.  He would never come
back, and she should never see him again--she was sure of that.  She
was only an old maid; a middle-aged gentlewoman who had never
possessed any great attraction for anybody; who had always been more
or less poor and unhappy, though of the best and living amongst the
best; whose few pleasures had come to her unexpectedly, like rare
gleams of pale sunshine on a very long rainy day; who had looked for
little and had got next to nothing out of life, save the crumbs of
enjoyment from the feast of rich relations, like the Trehearnes--a
woman who had known something more grievous than sorrow and worse
than violent grief, trudging through life in the leaden cowl of many
limitations--the leaden cowl of that most innocent of all hypocrites,
of her, or of him, who knows the daily burden of keeping up
appearances on next to nothing, and of doctoring poor little
illusions through a feeble existence, worth having because they
represent all that there is to have.

She had been wounded by one of those arrows shot in the dark which
hit hearts unawares and unaimed; and now that the shaft was suddenly
drawn out, the heart's blood followed it and the nerves quivered
where it had been.  It was only one of the little tragedies which no
one sees, few guess at, and nothing can hinder.  But Fanny Trehearne
felt that it was beside her, there in the little boat, while she
watched the pretty fireworks, and she was sorry and did what she
could to soothe the pain.

"Let's change, now," she said at last, just as the glow of a
multitude of coloured fires died away on the water.  "You take Mr.
Brinsley, and I'll take Mr. Lawrence."

As she spoke, she gave her cousin's hand a little squeeze of
sympathy, and heard the small sigh of satisfaction that answered the
proposal.  The rearrangement was effected in a few moments, the men
holding the boats together by the gunwales while the ladies stepped
from one into the other.

"Pull away," said Fanny, authoritatively, as soon as Lawrence had
shoved off.  "Let's get out of this!  I'll steer, so you needn't
bother about running into things."

Fairly seated in a boat, with the sculls shipped, and some one at the
tiller lines, Lawrence could get along tolerably well, for he knew
just enough not to catch a crab in smooth water, so long as he was
not obliged to turn his head.  But if he had to look over his
shoulder, something was certain to happen, which was natural,
considering that when he attempted to feather at all, he did it the
wrong way.

"You're stronger than anybody would think," observed Fanny, as she
saw how quickly the skiff moved.  "You might do things quite
decently, if you'd only take the trouble to learn."

"Oh no!  I'm a born duffer," laughed Lawrence.  "Besides, I couldn't
row long like this.  I couldn't keep it up."

They were just in front of the clubhouse now; and a score of rockets
went up together, with a rushing and a crackling and a gleaming, as
they soared and burst, and at last fell sputtering in the water all
around the skiff.  Lawrence had rested on his sculls to watch the
sight.

"Pull away!" said Fanny.  "We'll get under the foot-bridge by the
landing.  There's water enough there, and we can see everything."

Lawrence obeyed, and pulled as hard as he could.

"So your friend Mr. Brinsley is going away," observed the young girl,
suddenly.

"My friend!  I like that!  As though I had brought him in my pocket."

"I'm very glad that he's going, at all events," said Fanny, without
heeding his remark.  "I'm not fond of him any more."

"I hope you never were--fond of him."

"Oh yes, I was--but I'm thankful to say that it's over.  Of all the
ineffable cads!  I could have killed him to-day!"

"By the bye," said Lawrence, "when he was mounting you--didn't you do
that on purpose?"

"Of course.  And then I called him awkward.  It was so nice!  It did
me good."

"Pure spite, I suppose.  You couldn't have had any particular reason
for doing it, could you?"

"Oh dear, no!  What reason could I have?  It wasn't his fault that
the mare ran away, though I told him it was."

"That's interesting," observed Lawrence.  "Do you often do things out
of pure spite?"

"Constantly--without any reason at all!" Fanny laughed.

"Perhaps you'll marry out of spite, some day," said Lawrence, calmly.
"Women often do, they say, though I never could understand why."

"I daresay I shall.  I'm quite capable of it.  And shouldn't I be
just horrid afterwards!"

"I like you when you're horrid, as you call it.  I didn't at first.
You've given my sense of humour a chance to grow since I've been
here.  I say, Miss Trehearne--"  He stopped.

"What do you say?  It isn't particularly polite to begin in that way,
is it?  I suppose it's English."

"Oh, bother the English!  And I apologize for being slangy.  It's so
dark that I can't see you frown.  I meant to say, if you ever marry
out of spite, and want to be particularly horrid afterwards, it
wouldn't be a bad idea to marry me, for I don't mind that sort of
thing a bit, you know."

"That's a singular offer!" laughed Fanny, leaning far back, and
playing with the tiller lines in the glow of the Bengal lights.

"It's genuine of its kind," answered the young man.  "Of course it
isn't a sure thing, exactly," he added reflectively, "because it
depends on your happening to be in the spiteful humour.  But, as you
say that often happens--"

"Well, go on!"

"I thought you might feel spiteful enough to accept this evening,"
concluded Lawrence.

"Take care--I might, you know--you're in danger!"  She was still
laughing.

"Don't mind me, you know!  I could stand it, I believe."

"You're awfully amusing--sometimes, Mr. Lawrence."

"Meaning now?" enquired the artist, resting on his sculls, for they
were under the shadow of the bridge.

"I can't see your face distinctly," answered Fanny.  "So much depends
on the expression.  But I think--"

"What do you think?  That it's awfully amusing of me to offer to be
married as a sacrifice to your spite?"

"It's amusing anyway."

"A formal proposal would be, you mean?" asked Lawrence.  Then he
laughed oddly.

"I hate formality," answered Fanny.  "That is, in earnest, you know.
It's so disgusting when a man comes with his gloves buttoned and sits
on the edge of a chair and says--"

"And says what?"

"Oh--you know the sort of thing.  You must have done it scores of
times."

"What?  Proposed and been refused?  You're complimentary, at all
events.  I've a great mind to let you be the first, just--well--how
shall I say?  Just to associate you with a novel sensation."

"I might disappoint you," said Fanny, demurely.  "I told you so
before.  Just think, if I were to say 'yes,' you'd be most dreadfully
caught.  You'd have to eat humble pie and beg off, and say that you
hadn't meant it."

"Oh no!" laughed the young man.  "You'd break it off in a week, and
then it would be all right."

"Are you going to be rude?  Or are you, already?  I'm not quite sure."

"Neither.  Of course you'd break it off, if we had an agreement to
that effect."

"You don't make any allowance for my spitefulness.  It would be just
like me to hold you to your engagement.  Of course you wouldn't live
long.  We should be sure to fight."

"Oh--sure," assented Lawrence.  "That is, if you call this fighting."

"It would be worse than this.  But why don't you try?  I'm dying to
refuse you.  I'm just in the humour."

"Why!  I thought you said there was danger!  If I'd known there
wasn't--by the bye, this counts in the game, doesn't it?"

"There isn't anything to count, yet," said Fanny.  "Look at those
fiery fish--aren't they pretty?  See how they squirm about, and
fizzle, and behave like mad things!  Oh, I never saw anything so
pretty as that!"

"Yes.  If one must have an interruption, they do as well as anything."

"You weren't talking very coherently, I believe," said the young
girl, turning her head to watch the fireworks.  "And you've made me
miss lots of pretty things, I'm sure.  Oh--they've gone out already!
How dark it seems, all at once!  What were you asking?  Whether this
counted in the game?  Of course it counts.  Everything does.  But I
don't exactly see how--"

She stopped and looked towards him in the dim gloom of the shadow
under the bridge.  But Lawrence did not speak.  He looked over the
side of the boat, softly slapping the black water with the blade of
his scull.

"Why don't you go on?" asked Fanny, tapping the boards under her foot
to attract his attention.

"I was thinking over the proper words," answered Lawrence.  "How does
one make a formal proposal of marriage?  I never did such a thing in
my life."

"An informal one would do for fun."

"I never did that, either."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Really?  Swear it, as they say on the stage."  Fanny laughed softly.

"Oh, by Jove, yes!" answered Lawrence, promptly.  "I'll swear to that
by anything you please."

"Well--you'll have to do it some day, so you'd better practise at
once," suggested Fanny.

Lawrence did not notice that there was a sort of little relief in her
tone.

"I suppose one says, 'My angel, will you be mine?'" he said.  "That
sounds like some book or other."

"It might do," answered Fanny, meditatively.  "You ought to throw a
little more expression into the tone.  Besides, I'm not an angel,
whatever the girl in the book may have been.  On the whole--no--it's
a little too effusive.  Angel--you know.  It's such nonsense!  Try
something else; but put lots of expression into it."

"Does one get down on one's knees?" enquired Lawrence.

"Oh no; I don't believe it's necessary.  Besides, you'd upset the
boat."

"All right--here goes!  My dear Miss Trehearne, will you--

"Yes.  That's it.  Go on.  The quaver in the voice is rather well
done.  'Will you--'  What?"

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes, Mr. Lawrence, I will."

There was a short pause, during which a number of fiery fish were
sent off again, and squirmed and wriggled and fizzled their burning
little lives away in the water.  But neither of the young people
looked at them.

"You rather took my breath away," said Lawrence, with a change of
tone.  "Did I do it all right?"

"Oh--quite right," answered Fanny, thoughtfully.

Immediately after the words Lawrence heard a little sigh.  Then Fanny
heard one, too.

"You didn't happen to be in earnest, did you?" she asked suddenly, in
a low, soft voice.

"Well--I didn't mean--that I meant--you know we agreed to play a
game--"

"I know we did--but--were you in earnest."

"Yes--but, of course--  Oh, this isn't fair, Miss Trehearne!"

"Yes, it is.  I said 'yes,' didn't I?"

"Certainly, but--"

"There's no 'but.'  I happened to be in earnest, too--that's all.
I've lost the game."













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