Through centuries the home had enriched
itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread
huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the
massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births,
the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it
seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not
been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not
waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it.
She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on
her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as
she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than
Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care
which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on
to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but
could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a
spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone
in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there
boughs broken off by wind.
Storms lay upon it.
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