"The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know
very little of Sotherton."

Fanny, who was sitting on the other side of Edmund,
exactly opposite Miss Crawford, and who had been attentively
listening, now looked at him, and said in a low voice--

"Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you
think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn
your fate unmerited.'"

He smiled as he answered, "I am afraid the avenue stands
a bad chance, Fanny."

"I should like to see Sotherton before it is cut down,
to see the place as it is now, in its old state; but I do
not suppose I shall."

"Have you never been there? No, you never can;
and, unluckily, it is out of distance for a ride.
I wish we could contrive it."

"Oh! it does not signify. Whenever I do see it,
you will tell me how it has been altered."

"I collect," said Miss Crawford, "that Sotherton
is an old place, and a place of some grandeur.
In any particular style of building?"

"The house was built in Elizabeth's time, and is a large,