CHAPTER II
Halcyone struck straight across the park until she came to the beech
avenue, near the top, which ran south. The place had been nobly planned
by that grim old La Sarthe who raised it in the days of seventh Henry.
It stood very high with its terraced garden in the center of four
splendid avenues of oak, lime, beech and Spanish chestnut running east,
west, north and south. And four gates in different stages of
dilapidation gave entrance through a broken wall of stone to a circular
drive which connected all the avenues giving access to the house, a
battered, irregular erection of gray stone.
To reach the splendid front door you entered from the oak avenue and
crossed the pleasance, now only an overgrown meadow where the one cow
grazed in the summer.
Then you were obliged to mount three stately flights of stone steps
until you reached the first terrace, which was flagged near the house
and bordered with stiff flower-beds. Here you might turn and look back
due west upon a view of exquisite beauty--an undulating fertile country
beneath, and then in the far distance a line of dim blue hills.
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