“Is it not lovely?” said Laura.  “We have not been here an hour yet, and Mr. Kennedy insisted on bringing me here.”

“It is wonderfully beautiful,” said Phineas.

“It is this very spot where we now stand that made me build the house where it is,” said Mr. Kennedy, “and I was only eighteen when I stood here and made up my mind.  That is just twenty-five years ago.”  “So he is forty-three,” said Phineas to himself, thinking how glorious it was to be only twenty-five.  “And within twelve months,” continued Mr. Kennedy, “the foundations were being dug and the stone-cutters were at work.”

“What a good-natured man your father must have been,” said Lady Laura.

“He had nothing else to do with his money but to pour it over my head, as it were.  I don’t think he had any other enjoyment of it himself.  Will you go a little higher, Lady Laura?  We shall get a fine view over to Ben Linn just now.”  Lady Laura declared that she would go as much higher as he chose to take her, and Phineas was rather in doubt as to what it would become him to do.  He would stay where he was, or go down, or make himself to vanish after any most acceptable fashion; but if he were to do so abruptly it would seem as though he were attributing something special to the companionship of the other two.  Mr. Kennedy saw his doubt, and asked him to join them.  “You may as well come on, Mr. Finn.  We don’t dine till eight, and it is not much past six yet.  The men of business are all writing letters, and the ladies who have been travelling are in bed, I believe.”

“Not all of them, Mr. Kennedy,” said Lady Laura.  Then they went on with their walk very pleasantly, and the lord of all that they surveyed took them from one point of vantage to another, till they both swore that of all spots upon the earth Loughlinter was surely the most lovely.  “I do delight in it, I own,” said the lord.  “When I come up here alone, and feel that in the midst of this little bit of a crowded island I have all this to myself,—­all this with which no other man’s wealth can interfere,—­I grow proud of my own, till I become thoroughly ashamed of myself.  After all, I believe it is better to dwell in cities than in the country,—­better, at any rate, for a rich man.”  Mr. Kennedy had now spoken more words than Phineas had heard to fall from his lips during the whole time that they had been acquainted with each other.

“I believe so too,” said Laura, “if one were obliged to choose between the two.  For myself, I think that a little of both is good for man and woman.”

“There is no doubt about that,” said Phineas.

“No doubt as far as enjoyment goes,” said Mr. Kennedy.

He took them up out of the ravine on to the side of the mountain, and then down by another path through the woods to the back of the house.  As they went he relapsed into his usual silence, and the conversation was kept up between the other two.  At a point not very far from the castle,—­just so far that one could see by the break of the ground where the castle stood, Kennedy left them.  “Mr. Finn will take you back in safety, I am sure,” said he, “and, as I am here, I’ll go up to the farm for a moment.  If I don’t show myself now and again when I am here, they think I’m indifferent about the ’bestials’.”