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 

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