... All women she outvies
In every gentle grace. Her voice now thrilled
With soft delight his ravished ears, and filled
His listening soul with music’s harmony,
Sweet as the rippling water’s melody.’
Idylls, Legends and Lyrics.
The Royal Observatory was a stately building of great height erected close to the old building in Greenwich Park, which latter was kept as a show place, and used also as a lecture hall for students of Astronomy. The lower apartments of the new building were occupied by Mercia and her household, while the upper rooms were devoted to the purposes of her profession. A suite of rooms on the left wing were set apart as workshops for Geometrus, whose spare time was always taken up with planning or perfecting some wonderful astronomical instrument more powerful than the world had hitherto seen.
In a spacious apartment on the third floor which contained two powerful telescopes, constructed on principles of entirely modern invention, being capable of revealing the distant suns to an extent never before dreamt of, was Mercia surrounded by curious astroscopes, stellar-spectroscopes, and wonderfully constructed cameras, which delineated in an instant the starry heights, the glory of which has been the ambition of astronomers in all ages to fathom.
She was seated at her desk making some mathematical calculations of the celestial depths, and was so completely engrossed in her labours that the entrance of her fellow-worker, Geometrus, went unheeded. At length, coming to a close, she raised her head, when instantly a flush of pleasure brought the rose more vividly into her cheeks.
‘Ah, Geometrus, is it thou?’ she exclaimed, ‘I have finished the measurement of thy namesake, the fixed star, and am happy at last. His system of planets are now all perfect before me: I must write a treatise on this new addition to science so that posterity may know what we have attained.’