d master was generous and indulgent, and wasted, he
did not care to say how many days, in displaying to her the green
ruinousness of Ferndean--in climbing the hills and hunting out the
widest views for her--in taking her out in his boat, and rowing her in
sunshine and shade, enjoying her wonder and exultation most
benevolently. In a short time he left her to herself, for he had much
property, to whose numerous details he attended with rigid
conscientiousness, and he had been a student from his youth, and sat
almost as much as Dr. Bower in his library, although it was an airier
and more heterogeneously fitted-up sanctuary. Leslie was perfectly
satisfied; in fact, while the novelty around her was fresh, she
preferred to wander about at her leisure, and find out places for
herself, because Hector Garret was always hurrying her, and she was
trying so hard to be clever, active, and amiable. Ah, that slight strain
already perceptible, that growth of ignorance, misconception, and
extravagant reverence--what fruit would it bear?

Otter was a rambling white house in a green meadow opening to the sea.
Its salient points were its size and age. The slowest-growing shrubs in
its pleasance were tough, seamed, branched and bowed with time. There
were few trees in the neighbourhood except at forsaken Ferndean; but
there were slow swelling hills crowned with heather closing in the
valley over which Otter presided with the dignified paternal character
of the great house of strath, or glen. Leslie smiled when she first
heard the natives of the district term the grey or glittering track that
bounded the western horizon, "The Otter Sea," but very soon she fell
into the use of the same name, and was conscious of feeling far more
interest in the boats and ships that crossed that limited space, than in
those which she saw from the hilltops spread far and wide over a great
expanse broken only by the misty Irish coast-line. Indeed, Hector Garret
explained to her that he had seignorial claims over that strip of
waves--that the seaweed, and, after certain restrictions, the fragments
of wreck cast upon its sands, were his property, quite as much as if he
had waved his banner over it, like the gallant Spaniard, in the name of
his Most Catholic Majesty.

Leslie had variety in her locality; the beach, with its huge boulders
and inspiring music; the fields and "uplands airy," with their hedge
wealth of vetch, briar, and bramble; the garden, the ancien