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The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic
page 309 of 402 (76%)

The voices died away. Theron sat up, with a look of arrested thought
upon his face, then sprang to his feet and moved hurriedly through the
parlor to an open front window. Peering out with caution he saw that the
two women receding from view were fashionably dressed and evidently
came from homes of means. He stared after them in a blank way until they
turned a corner.

He went into the hall then, put on his frock-coat and hat, and stepped
out into the garden. He was conscious of having rather avoided it
heretofore--not altogether without reasons of his own, lying unexamined
somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Now he walked slowly about, and
examined the flowers with great attentiveness. The season was
advancing, and he saw that many plants had gone out of bloom. But what a
magnificent plenitude of blossoms still remained!

Thirty dollars' worth of dahlias--that was what the stranger had said.
Theron hardly brought himself to credit the statement; but all the same
it was apparent to even his uninformed eye that these huge, imbricated,
flowering masses, with their extraordinary half-colors, must be unusual.
He remembered that the boy in Gorringe's office had spoken of just one
lot of plants costing thirty-one dollars and sixty cents, and there had
been two other lots as well. The figures remained surprisingly distinct
in his memory. It was no good deceiving himself any longer: of course
these were the plants that Gorringe had spent his money upon, here all
about him.

As he surveyed them with a sour regard, a cool breeze stirred across the
garden. The tall, over-laden flower-spikes of gladioli bent and nodded
at him; the hollyhocks and flaming alvias, the clustered blossoms on the
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