There was in the old times a freshness, a softness,
an ever-varying and yet ever-remaining tenderness of beauty in her
face, the charm of which it is not possible to express in words,
or, as poor Hartright used often to say, in painting either. This
is gone. I thought I saw the faint reflection of it for a moment
when she turned pale under the agitation of our sudden meeting on
the evening of her return, but it has never reappeared since.
None of her letters had prepared me for a personal change in her.
On the contrary, they had led me to expect that her marriage had
left her, in appearance at least, quite unaltered. Perhaps I read
her letters wrongly in the past, and am now reading her face
wrongly in the present? No matter! Whether her beauty has gained
or whether it has lost in the last six months, the separation
either way has made her own dear self more precious to me than
ever, and that is one good result of her marriage, at any rate!
The second change, the change that I have observed in her
character, has not surprised me, because I was prepared for it in
this case by the tone of her letters. Now that she is at home
again, I find her just as unwilling to enter into any details on
the subject of her married life as I had previously found her all
through the time of our separation, when we could only communicate
with each other by writing.
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