Chapter 42 - Part 2 - Sense and Sensibility

Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained, busy in new engagements and new schemes in which she could have no share, without shedding many tears. Eleanor's satisfaction at the moment of removal was more positive. She had no such subject 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 forever. 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 tranquillity 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 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 the thick screen of them together, 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 Coombe 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.