In the midst of ordinary English country scenery, these gardens had been set by a great Frenchman who had caught the strange secret of the romance of utterly formal hedges.  He could make of them a fitting framework for the glories of a court, or for sylvan life in Merrie England.  There were miles of hedges; not yew, hornbeam had been chosen for this green, tranquil country.  At one spot many avenues of 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 only time after our first walk here that we have been alone she made Miss Dexter join us, and as the girl would not stay Rose found she must write letters.”