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 

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