But such as it was--the sight of the empty study, which was to be his own room in future; the strange granite monument shining in the sun; the rush of home associations which the familiar landscape aroused--augmented it for the time being, and made the young man glad of a moment's solitude.
There was the drooping ash--which had made such a cool, refreshing tent in summer--where he had learnt his first lessons at his mother's knee, and where he had kept his rabbit-hutch for a season, until his father had found it out, and despatched it to the stable-yard.
His punishments and the troubles of his childhood had always been associated with his father, and its pleasures and indulgences with his mother; but neither had made any very strong impression on Peter's mind, and it was of his father that he thought with most sympathy, and even most affection.

Partly, doubtless, because Sir Timothy was dead, and because Peter's memories were not vivid ones, any more than his imagination was vivid; but also because his mind was preoccupied with a vague resentment against his mother.
He could not understand the change which was, nevertheless, so evident.

Her new-born brightness and ease of manner, and her strangely increased loveliness, which had been yet more apparent on the previous evening, when she was dressed for dinner, than on his first arrival.
It was absurd, Peter thought, in all the arrogance of disdainful youth, that a woman of her age should have learnt to care for her appearance thus; or to wear becoming gowns, and arrange her hair like a fashion plate.
If it had been Sarah he could have understood.
At the thought of Sarah the colour suddenly flushed across his thin, tanned face, and he moved uneasily.
Sarah, too, was changed; but not even Peter could regret the change in Sarah.
The loveliness of his mother, refined and white and delicate as she was, did not appeal to him; but Sarah, in her radiant youth, with her brilliant colouring--fresh as a May morning, buxom as a dairymaid, scornful as a princess--had struck Sir Peter dumb with admiration, though he had hitherto despised young women.

It almost enraged him to remember that this stately beauty had ever been an impudent little schoolgirl, with a turned-up nose and a red pigtail.

In days gone by, Miss Sarah had actually fought and scratched the spoilt boy, who tried to tyrannize over his playmate as he tyrannized over his mother and his aunts.