hedges met
together as if by accident, or by some rhythmic movement; it was a
minuet of Nature's dancing, grown into formal lines but not
petrified--every detail, in fact, alive with green leaves. If you stood
in the midst of this meeting of the ways, the country round outside,
seen in vistas between the hedges, was curiously glorified, more
especially on one side where the avenues were shortened. There one saw
larger glimpses of fields and woods and bits of common-land that seemed
wonderfully eloquent of freedom and simplicity, nature and husbandry.
But if you had not seen those glimpses through the lines of strange,
stately, regal dignity--the lines of those mighty hedges--you would not
have been so startled by their charm. That was the triumph of the genius
of Lenotre: he had seen that, framed in the sternest symbols of rule and
order, one could get the freshest joy in the pictures of Nature's
untouched handiwork. On the west side the avenues of hedges disappeared
into distant vistas of wood, one only ending in a piece of most formal
ornamental water. I don't know how it was, but it was difficult not to
be infected by a curious sense of orgy, of human beings up to their
tricks--love tricks, drinking and eating--perhaps murdering tricks--all
done in some impish fantastic way, between those long hedges or behind
them. If there were not something going on down one avenue you looked
into, it was happening in another.

Somewhat of all this Edmund said to Molly as they strolled between the
hedges which reached far above his head, but she felt that he was
absent-minded while he did so. He had planned for himself a walk and a
talk with Rose, but he had reckoned without his hostess, who had shown
so unmistakably that she intended him to amuse Molly that it would have
been discourteous to have done anything else. He had felt rather cross
as he saw Lady Groombridge and Rose turn down one of the longest walks,
one that seemed indeed to have no ending at all, with an air of
finality, as if their _tete-a-tete_ were to be as long as the path
before them, and as secret as the hedges could keep it. He would never
have come out driving with three women if he had not hoped to get a talk
alone with Rose. He told himself that Rose's avoidance of him was
becoming quite an affectation, and after all, he asked himself, what had
he done to be treated like this?

"Why, if I were trying to make love to her she could not be more absurd!
The