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.

But if you chanced to wish to enter your carriage unwetted on a rainy
day, you were obliged to deny yourself the pleasure of passing through
the entrance hall in state, and to go out at the back by stone passages
into the courtyard where the circular avenue came up close to a
fortified door, under the arch of which you could drive.

Everything spoke of past grandeur and present decay--only the
flower-beds of the highest terrace appeared even partly cultivated; the
two lower ones were a wild riot of weeds and straggling rose trees
unpruned and untrained, and if you looked up at the windows in the
southern wing of the house, you saw that several panes in them were
missing and that the holes had been stuffed with rags.

At this time of the year the beech avenue presented an indescribably
lovely sight of just opening leaves of tender green. It was a
never-failing joy to Halcyone. She walked the few paces which separated
her from it and turning, stood leaning against the broken gate now,
drinking in every tone of the patches the lowered sun made of gold
between the green. For her it was full of wood nymphs and elves. It did