He made money lavishly at last: all his operations were
successful, even those which seemed the wildest gambling: and the most
forlorn speculations turned round, and shewed a pretty harvest, when Garth
meddled with their stock.
And all the time he was waiting there, and scheming, at Agnas Blancas, in a
feverish concentration of himself upon his ultimate reunion with the girl
at home, the man was growing old: gradually at first, and insensibly; but
towards the end, by leaps and starts, with an increasing consciousness
of how he aged and altered, which did but feed his black melancholy.
It was borne upon him, perhaps, a little brutally, and not by direct
self-examination, when there came another photograph from England. A
beautiful face still, but certainly the face of a woman, who had passed
from the grace of girlhood (seven years now separated her from it), to a
dignity touched with sadness: a face, upon which life had already written
some of its cruelties. For many days after this arrival, Garth was silent
and moody, even beyond his wont: then he studiously concealed it. He threw
himself again furiously into his economic battle; he had gone back to the
inspiration of that other, older portrait: the charming, oval face of a
young girl, almost a child, with great eyes, that one guessed one knew not
why, to be the colour of violets.
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