Here, as they turned into the
highroad by the Barradine Arms and the cluster of adjacent cottages,
they had a splendid panoramic view of the Abbey estate rolling
downward on their left in wide, sylvan beauty as far as the eye could
see. From this higher ground, the park showed like an irregular
pattern of lighter color on a dark green carpet, and a few of the main
rides were visible here and there as truncated straight lines that
began and ended capriciously; but all the houses and buildings lay
hidden by the undulating woodland. Mavis turned her eyes toward the
point where North Ride Cottage shyly concealed itself, and then she
glanced back at Dale. He was staring straight in front, not looking to
left or right, as if focusing the roadway between the horse's ears.
"It's uphill now, Will, all the way, isn't it? Oh, that's a new
cottage. How red the bricks are!"
They had left all the trees behind them now, and, going up the slope
through the last strip of fields, they soon emerged on the open heath.
For a mile or two the landscape was wildly sad in aspect, just a waste
of sand and heather, with naked ridges and boggy hollows, one or two
wind-swept hillocks that bore a ragged crest of blackened firs, and in
the farthest distance massive contours of grassy down rising as a
barrier to guard the fertile valleys of another county.
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