Jill: a Flower Girl by L.T. Meade

Notwithstanding the uses of adversity, it is astonishing how well prosperity _agrees_ with some people. It has much the same sort of effect on them that the sun has on fruit and flowers. All the graces within them which have been invisible while the rough winds of adversity blew, now blossom, and show sweet bits of colour, and little tender, gracious perfumes, which no one would have supposed consistent with such hard, crabbed, in short disagreeable products of nature.

Silas Lynn had all through his life, up to the present day, been visited by the harsh winds of adversity.