Love in Idleness: A Bar Harbour Tale

by F. Marion Crawford

"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.