She pulled herself up. "Have I? But it is so useless. And it seems to get worse and worse since Mr. Hirsch came in. He is at the Keep now, arranging for a light railway. And oh, Ned! the place where we used to picnic as children--you remember, of course--is all placarded as 'eligible building-sites.'"
Ned whistled, and looked out to sea. As he had said, the white cliffs of Marine England were so disfigured everywhere; but that did not bring much consolation for the destruction of absolute beauty.
"Well," he said, "I only hope some one may think them so, and that the hotel is crowded up to the garrets. It's got to be; for the farmers and the little shopkeepers at Haverton, who put their piles into it--because my uncle did--will expect a dividend!"
"And the others too," she added bitterly. "You know Mr. Hirsch has floated it. It's quoted on the Stock Exchange now, and they are going to run up select jerry-built villas with the money they get on the new shares, as they ran up the jerry-built hotel----"
"With mine," laughed Ned, a trifle uneasily. "Well, my dear child, I hadn't any intention of building it--but it's there--and let us come and look at it. It can't help, can it, being in a lovely spot?"
"Can't it?" she said coldly; "but I try to forget its existence--it gets on my nerves."
"Apparently," he said quietly.
"And so it would on yours," she retorted, "if you lived within hail of it, and nothing else was talked about day and night. But there--let's leave it alone! You can see it on your way to the 'Crooked Ewe.' We shall expect you to lunch, of course."
"Thanks," he replied; "and--and I think you'll like the Scotch doctor--he is so awfully keen. So full too of his work at Blackborough. He is house-surgeon, I think, to some hospital there."
Her face, a moment before, almost sullen in its obstinate objection, lit up at once. "Not St. Peter's!" she cried. "How interesting---- Why! it is the best, they say, in the kingdom; and I mean to have my training in the children's ward there."