The Coast of Adventure by Harold Bindloss

The hot summer day was over and the light beginning to fade when Evelyn came down the steps of a country house in northern Maine. Banner's Post stood at the foot of a hillside among the dark pines, and the murmur of running water echoed about its walls. It belonged to Mrs. Willans, Mrs. Cliffe's sister, for Willans, who had bought the house at his wife's command, seldom came there and did not count. Mrs. Willans wanted a peaceful retreat where she and her friends, when jaded by social activities, could rest and recuperate in the silence of the woods. She had many interests and what she called duties, but she had of late felt called upon, with her sister's full approval, to arrange a suitable marriage for her niece. Henry Cliffe was not really rich.

Evelyn was dressed in the latest summer fashion, and the thin, light clothes became her. The keen mountain breezes had given her a fine color, and she looked very fresh and young by contrast with the jaded business man at her side. Cliffe wore an old gray suit that Evelyn had never seen and shabby leggings. A creel hung round his shoulders, and he carried a fishing-rod. His face was lined and pale, but when they left the garden and entered the woods Evelyn was surprised to note that his thin figure harmonized with the scattered boulders and the ragged pines. To some extent, this might be accounted for by the neutral tint of his clothes, but he somehow looked at home in the wilderness. Though he had once or twice gone off with an old friend on a shooting trip, she had never thought of her father as a sport.