So he dined in state with Sophia, and found it hard work to keep up a
little commonplace conversation with her during the solemn meal--his heart
being elsewhere all the time.
That phase of gloom and despondency, through which, his mind had passed
during the summer that was gone, had given place to brighter thoughts. A
new dawn of hope had come for him with the birth of his child.
He told himself again, as he had so often told himself in the past, that
his wife would grow to love him--that time would bring him the fruition
of his desires. In the meanwhile he was almost entirely happy in the
possession of this new blessing. All his life was coloured by the existence
of this infant. He had a new zest in the driest details of his position
as the master of a great estate. He had bought some two thousand acres of
neighbouring land at different times since his purchase of Arden Court; and
the estate, swollen by these large additions, was fast becoming one of the
finest in the county.
There was not a tree he planted in the beginning of this new year which
he did not consider with reference to his boy; and he made extensive
plantations on purpose that he might be able to point to them by-and-by
and say, "These trees were planted the year my son was born." When he went
round his stables, he made a special survey of one particularly commodious
loose-box, which would do for his boy's pony.
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