Mrs.Costello's illness, and Lucia's preoccupation, made them receive with indifference the visits of those who, after seeing them at the little English church, and by the sea, thought it "only neighbourly to call." Their home arrangements were different to those they had made in Paris.
Here they were really lodgers, and their landlady, Madame Everaert, waited on them.

She was a fat, good natured, half Dutch widow, who took from the first a lively interest in the invalid mother, and in the daughter who would have been so handsome if she had been stouter and more rosy; and in a very little while she found that her new lodgers had one quality, which above all others gave them a claim on her good will, they were excellent listeners.

Almost every evening in the twilight she would come herself to their sitting-room, with the lamp, or with some other errand for an excuse, and would stay chattering in her droll Flemish French for at least half an hour.

This came to be one of the features of the day.

Another was a daily walk, which Lucia had most frequently to take alone, but which always gave her either from the shore, or from the ramparts, a long sorrowful look over the sea towards England--towards Canada perhaps--or instead of either, to some far-away fairy country where there were no mistakes and no misunderstandings.
Between these two--between morning and evening--time was almost a blank.
Lucia had completely given up her habits of study.