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?"