'It seems so, indeed. If I had journeyed to another planet, all this could not seem more fresh and delightful. Have you ever been there?' 'In London? Oh no; why should I? I was born here, and this is my home.' True enough, London with its smoke and turmoil was no place for this young sibyl. Her beautiful feet were made to tread nothing lower than mountain-tops. I asked her whether many people visited them here. 'Last year we saw a great many--twelve, I believe,' she answered quite simply, as if the population of the earth were but a small multiple of that number. 'But they were all scientific persons, who came to find out about our discoveries. You are not scientific?' 'No, indeed! I am nothing--only a young man.' 'You are the first young man I have seen.' 'I wish I were a better specimen!' I said rather ruefully. 'They are not all like me, I assure you!' She turned upon me the full gaze of her changing eyes, and I felt that she was looking very far into me. After a pause she said thoughtfully, 'It is strange! You look a little--yes, a great deal--like.... Are you like your mother?' 'I believe more like my father.' She shook her head, still thoughtfully. Then, rousing herself, she said with a smile, 'You look pale and tired; but that we shall cure you of.' 'Why I begin to feel cured already, what with this pure air and--and all! But tell me, Cousin Diana, what are these discoveries you speak of?' At this question her face became quite grave again, and she answered with a somewhat altered manner, and a lower intonation, as though touching upon a subject invested with a kind of sacredness: 'We do not speak of it to strangers--that is, we never speak of it. But you are not a stranger: and father said I might trust you: and--I think I may! Well, you shall know in good time.' At this juncture my uncle came in. 'Now, nephew, your room is ready for you. You and Diana have had time enough to become good cousins, I hope? Very well, come up and get ready for dinner. This way!' He conducted me along a passage to a narrow door, on opening which a winding staircase was discovered. Ascending this--a somewhat weary journey for me--my uncle paused on the third landing and ushered me into a nearly circular room, fitted and furnished with dark carved wood. Two or three dusky oil-portraits hung on the walls--which last, judging from the deep embrasures of the windows, must have been of extraordinary thickness; and the massive groined ceiling seemed designed to support a vast superincumbent weight. 'This is the lower chamber,' observed my uncle. 'As long as you stay with us it will be yours.' 'I'm not turning you out of your travelling-carriage, Uncle Philip?' 'That's overhead,' he answered, with a smile. 'After dinner, if the evening turns out clear, you may go up there, and try a little excursion.' A light began to dawn upon my slow wits. 'It is an observatory!' I exclaimed. 'You are an astronomer?'