"About?--Oh, the wonders of--of what I have seen to-night." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Are you satisfied, my son?" said Mrs Alleyne, when she kissed him that night. "Yes, dear mother, thoroughly," he said to her; and then to himself--"No." END OF VOLUME ONE. Volume 2, Chapter I. AFTER A LAPSE. It was about a mile from the Alleynes' where the sandy lane, going north, led by an eminence, rugged, scarped, and crowned with great columnar firs that must have sprung from seeds a couple of hundred years ago. By day, when the sun shone in from the east at his rising, or from the west at his going down, the great towering trunks that ran up seventy or eighty feet without a branch looked as if cast in ruddy bronze, while overhead the thick, dark, boughs interlaced and shut out the sky. It was a gloomy enough spot by day amidst the maze of tall columns, with the ground beneath slippery from the dense carpeting of pine needles; by night, whether a soft breeze was overhead whispering in imitation of the surging waves, or it was a storm, there was ever that never-ending sound of the sea upon the shore, making the place in keeping with the spirit of him who sought for change and relief from troublous thoughts. Moray Alleyne's brain was full of trouble, of imperious thoughts that would not be kept back, and one night, to calm his disturbed spirit, he went out from the observatory, bare-headed, to walk for a few minutes up and down the garden. But there was no rest there, and, feeling confined and cribbed within fence and hedge, he glanced for a moment or two at the tall window with its undrawn blinds, through which he could see Mrs Alleyne, seated stiff and with an uncompromising look upon her face, busy stitching at a piece of linen in which she was making rows of the finest nature, in preparation for a garment to be worn by her son. Lucy was at the other side of the table, also working, but, as the lamplight fell upon her face, Alleyne could see that it was unruffled and full of content. He sighed as he turned away, and thought of the past, when his thoughts went solely to his absorbing work--when this strange attraction, as he termed it, had not come upon him and drawn him, as it were, out of his course. Only a short time back, and he went on in his matter-of-fact, mundane orbit, slowly working out problems, sometimes failing, but always returning to the task with the same calm peaceful serenity of spirit, waiting patiently for the triumph of science that sooner or later came for his reward. How calm and unruffled all this had been. No fever of the soul, no tempest of spirit to disturb the even surface of his life. But now all was changed. They had torn him amongst them from the happy, placid life, to give him rage, and bitterness and pain.