"How nice everything looks!" she said.
"Yes," answered her uncle, with a sigh; "the place is kept well enough nowadays."
A woman came out to open the gates—a brisk young person, who was a stranger to Clarissa, not the feeble old lodge-keeper she remembered in her childhood. The change, slight as it was, gave her a strange chill feeling.
"I wonder how many people that I knew are dead?" she thought.
They drove into the park, and here too, even in this autumn season, Clarissa perceived traces of care and order that were strange to her. The carriage road was newly gravelled, the chaos of underwood among the old trees had disappeared, the broad sweeps of grass were smooth and level as a lawn, and there were men at work in the early morning, planting rare specimens of the fir tribe in a new enclosure, which filled a space that had been bared twenty years before by Mr. Lovel's depredations upon the timber.
All this bewildered Clarissa; but she was still more puzzled, when, instead of approaching the Court the fly turned sharply into a road leading across a thickly wooded portion of the park, through which there was a public right of way leading to the village of Arden.
"The man is going wrong, uncle!" she exclaimed.
"No, no, my dear; the man is right enough."
"But indeed, uncle Oliver, he is driving to the village."
"And he has been told to drive to the village."