"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.