The morning was bright and cheerful, as a morning sometimes is after a devastating storm.

The clouds, of which there were plenty in evidence, brought no lingering idea of gloom.

All nature was bright and joyous, being in striking contrast to the scenes of wreck and devastation, the effects of obliterating fire and lasting ruin.
The only evidence of the once stately pile of Castra Regis and its inhabitants was a shapeless huddle of shattered architecture, dimly seen as the keen breeze swept aside the cloud of acrid smoke which marked the site of the once lordly castle.

As for Diana's Grove, they looked in vain for a sign which had a suggestion of permanence.

The oak trees of the Grove were still to be seen--some of them--emerging from a haze of smoke, the great trunks solid and erect as ever, but the larger branches broken and twisted and rent, with bark stripped and chipped, and the smaller branches broken and dishevelled looking from the constant stress and threshing of the storm.
Of the house as such, there was, even at the short distance from which they looked, no trace.