new schemes, in which
SHE could have no share, without shedding many tears.
Elinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive.
She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left
no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment's regret to be
divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the
persecution of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing her
sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked
forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might
do towards restoring Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own.
Their journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into
the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was
it dwelt on by turns in Marianne's imagination; and in the forenoon of
the third they drove up to Cleveland.
Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping
lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably
extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance,
it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth
gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was
dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of
the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them
altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the
offices.
Marianne entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the
consciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty
from Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its
walls, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her child
to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through the
winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a
distant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering
over a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on
the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their
summits Combe Magna might be seen.
In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears
of agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different circuit
to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of
wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she
resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained
with the Palmers, in the
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