Even now, however, the house exhibited a curious ignorance or disregard of the tastes of those for whose use it was built--the windows of all its sitting-rooms opened upon the straggling street, while the glorious prospect of cliff and ocean which it commanded behind was totally ignored.

Thus Richard Yorke found himself located in an apartment which, though otherwise tolerably comfortable, might as well have been in Bloomsbury for the view which it afforded.

The walls were ornamented by colored pictures of the Royal Exchange and of the Thames Tunnel, London; and upon the mantel-piece was an equestrian figure (in china) of Field-marshal the Duke of Wellington as he appears upon the arch of Constitution Hill.

The only attempt at "local coloring" was found in the book-case--composed of two boards and a cat's cradle--in which three odd volumes of the "Tales of the Castle" had been placed, no doubt with reference to the grand old ruin whose tottering walls beckoned "the quality" to Gethin.
His simple meal of bacon and eggs having been dispatched, and gratitude failing to invest with interest the lean pigs that searched in vain for cabbage-stalks, or the dyspeptic fowls that were moulting digestive pebbles in the street without, Richard lit a cigar, and prepared to saunter forth.

The fog had vanished; all the sky was blue and bright.
The keen and gusty air increased in him that elasticity of spirit with which luncheon at all stages of their life-journey inspires mankind.
"I suppose," said he, looking in at the window of the room he had just left, and where Hannah, who was waiting-maid as well as cook, except "in the season," was clearing away the remnants of the repast, "one can get to the castle without a guide ?" "Nay, Sir; you must get the key first, for the man don't bide at the cottage, except in summer-time, and the gate has got spikes at the top.
Miss Harry has got it somewheres, if you'll wait a minute." Miss Harry herself brought it out to him.