"How stupid people are!" she said half aloud. "How can they call this place desolate and ugly. Why, there's something growing everywhere, and the gorse and broom are simply lovely." There was a soft moisture in her pretty eyes, as they rested on the blue-looking distant hills, the purple stretches of heather, and the rich green lawnlike patches of meadow land, saved from the wilds around. Between the hills there were dark shadowy spots, upon them brilliant bits of sunshine, while on all sides the gauzy, silvery vapours floated low down, waiting for the sun, as it increased in power, to drink them up, and after them the millions of iridescent tiny globules that whitened the herbage like frost. The birds were singing from every patch of woodland in the distance; there was the monotonous "coo coo, coo--_coo, coo-hoo-coo_!" of a wood-pigeon in the pine tops singing his love-song that he always ends in the middle, and far out over the heathery common lark after lark was circling round and rising, in a wide spiral, up and up into the blue sky as it poured forth the never-wearying strain. "People are as stupid and as dense as can be," said Lucy. "Ours is a grim-looking home, I know, but oh! how beautiful the country is--I wouldn't live anywhere else for the world." There seemed to be no reason for a blush to come into Lucy's cheeks at this declaration, but one certainly did come, like a ruddy cloud over their soft outline, as she glanced back at the blank-looking pile with the hideous brick additions made by Alleyne for his instruments and observations. Not so much as a thread of smoke rose yet, from either of the chimneys, for Eliza was only at the point that necessitated a vexed rub occasionally at her nose with the woody part of a blacklead brush; Mrs Alleyne was dreaming of her son; and her son, who sought his pillow a couple of hours before--after a long watch of his star as it climbed to the zenith and then went down--to lie and think of Glynne Day, and ask himself whether he was not a scoundrel to allow such thoughts to enter his breast. "How good it is to get up so early," thought Lucy, aloud; and then she stepped lightly over the dewy grass, marked down the spot where several mushrooms were growing, and then stepped on to the sandy road. "I wish Moray would get up early," she thought, "it would be so nice to have him for a companion; but, poor fellow, he must be tired of a morning. I know what I'll do," she cried suddenly. "I'll get Glynne to promise to meet me two or three times a week, whenever it's fine, and we'll go together." Her cheeks flushed a little hot as she began to think about Glynne, and her thoughts ran somewhat in this fashion,-- "She doesn't know--she doesn't understand a bit, or she would never have consented. Oh! it's absolutely horrid, and I don't believe he cares for her a morsel more than she cares for him."