The Mysteries of the Court of London, Vol. 7 — page 64: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XI. S038. Is a sumptuously fornished drawing-room, in a house belonging to one of the handapmest terraces in the Regent’s Park, a lady was seated. The apartment itself was characterised with splendour more than with elegance: every detail of ite appointosents was rich and oostly—ao that the evidences of wealth were assembled together with s profusion more calculated for ostentatious display than consistent with refined taste. The walls were crowded with vast mirrors: the style of the furniture gwes of ascariet and gold: nick-nacks which had cost vast sums, were ecattered about as ornamental trifles. The room, though spacious, was in point of fact encumbered with its own magnificence: and thus was it divested of that real air of comfort which good taste knows so skilfully how to blend with the dassling effeote of splendour. Yet amidst all these objects of a grand and gor- geous luxury whioh were so overwhelmingly heaped together in this drawing-room, there were a few slight evidences of a more correct and refined in- tellect than that which had presided over the general appointments of the apartment. There mere flowers tastefully arranged with a view to the harmonizing of their brilliant colours: music rested upon an open piano, and lay upon a atool near a harp. There was a portfolio upon one of the centre-tables; and this contained several beautiful specimens of drawing, alike in pencil and in water-colour. An elegant piece of embroidery-work, half finished, lay on the sofa on which sat the fair occupant of this room. The books which were formally arranged upon the tables for mere purposes of show, were as trum- in their contente as they were gorgeous in their binding: but on the sofa, near the em- broidery, lay three or four volumes containing the works of the best British poets; and these were in a comparatively common binding. The dress of the young lady herself was simple and neat—in the best possible taste—and therefore in reality characterized with a more real elegance than if it had beon of the magnificent style which one would have expected to discern on the part of a female occupant of that eumptuoualy furnished room. Need we say that iggwas the refined taste of this lady to which a visi would feel hirgself indebted for those little evidgnoes of sttperior and more intellectual judgment “which, few though they were, nevertheless afforded a certain relief to the eye and to the mind, otherwise dassled and satiated by*the presence of all that ostentatious © display of srealth P The lady of whom we are speaking, was Zoe, Mr. Armytage's daughter; and the house to which we have introduced the reader, was Mr. Armytage’s All the rooms in that house—save two ipal apartment : thousands aud ee have been lavished in us dwelling put very where throughout the mansion, with the excep of the bao rooms to which we have alluded, there THE MYSTERIES OF THR COURT. *. uN eee sents os sen snide & parvenu, who, aspiring to move in the best most brilliant soviety, fancied that his ows: pleteian origin and upstart position would be lost:sight . of. in the dagsling splendours by which he, Wik Nt rounded. The two rooms which formed sm.#&e ception to the rule, were the private cones of Zoe Armytage hereelf: namely, her boudoit ae her bed-chamber. Those she had caused to. be fitted up in conformance with her own reltped | taste ; and the simple elegance which charactariagd. | these rooms, afforded a sufficient proof of what the |’. entire mansion would have been if the same genius had superintended all ite appointments. . But now, between three and four o'slock on a certain afternoon, we find Miss Armytage seated |. in the drawing-room, from the simple fact that this was the visiting hour when “morning cajls” might be expected: for in the fasbionable world it is always morning until dinner-time, pveu though the dinner hour be postponed ungil seven o'clock in the evening. Zoe, however, could nob endure the magnifloence of that apartment unless it were relieved by the presence of flowers, and unleas her time, when she was alone, could be occupied with music, with her pencil, her em- broidery, or her favourite authors. The simply. bound books, therefore, had accompanied her from the well-chosen little library in her own boudoir; beoause not for a single instant could she bear to bend over the nauseating trash which filled the gorgeously bound Annuals which lay upon the tables. Miss Armytage was about twenty years of age. Her countenance was an oval of the moat fanltless outline: she was not merely beautiful, but: inter- eating—and of that sweet loveable appearan which, apart from mere beauty, renders 6 woman so exquisitely charming. Eley” features were regular and delicately formed: her nose wae perfectly straight: ker mouth was smaill—the lips classicaily cut, and of scarlet brightness. Her eyes were large and of a clear limpid blue,— fringed with dark lashes, and surmounted by brows well separated and finely arched: 20 that the expression of her countenance was full of franknves and ingenuous innocence. Those lashes and thse brows were many, shades darker than her hair, which was of a rich light brown—soft and silky—and with so lustrous a gloss upon it, thet if worn in bands and left somewhat wavy, it seemed golden where the light fell upon it, and dark where the shades remained. But if worn in ringlets, then did a perfect shower of that light brown hair fall in natural curls on either side of this lovely countenance,~descending upon well- formed shoulders, and upon a neck pure and stainless as alabaster. There was something in- expressibly sweet in her exile: the purity of her thoughts made her countenance seem the face of an angel; and as her cbroplexion was delicately fair, though with the roseate tint of health upon the cheeks, this transparent purity of the skin added to the angelic atyle of her loveliness. Though not tall—indeed not above the middle height of woman—her figure nevertheless of a loftier stature on account of ‘its : symmetry, ite Hithe elasticity, and ite flowing roundness of sontour and of limb. Every move ment was ¢hnracterised by an unstadied grace: was the pervasive indication of the vulgar mind of every gesture was replete with en elegance all ia g CO (C | NOG SS CO