The cold light of December lay upon it all; there was no
special beauty in the landscape, and no magnificence in the house or its
surroundings. But every detail of what she saw pleased the girl's
taste, and satisfied her heart. All the while she was comparing it with
other scenes and another landscape, amid which she had lived till now--a
monotonous blue sea, mountains scorched and crumbled by the sun, dry
palms in hot gardens, roads choked with dust and tormented with a plague
of motor-cars, white villas crowded among high walls, a wilderness of
hotels, and everywhere a chattering unlovely crowd.
"Thank goodness!--that's done with," she thought--only to fall into a
sudden remorse. "Papa--papa!--if you were only here too!"
She pressed her hands to her eyes, which were moist with sudden tears.
But the happiness in her heart overcame the pang, sharp and real as it
was. Oh! how blessed to have done with the Riviera, and its hybrid empty
life, for good and all!--how blessed even, to have done with the Alps
and Italy!--how blessed, above all, to have come _home!_--home into the
heart of this English land--warm mother-heart, into which she, stranger
and orphan, might creep and be at rest.
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