The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

plebeian her parentage might have been, Zoe’e recollections went no farther back than to associate themselves with a comfortable ! governess and the who the various de- partments of her education, he was by no means capable of judiciously exercising such authority. She loved her father, not merely because she was naturally of an affectionate disposition—but like- wise because she beheld, or fancied she beheld, in his zealous care on her behalf, a fond paternal endeavour to i ify her as much as possible for the loss of her maternal perent. Thus as she grew up, she delicately avoided hurting her father’s feelings by suffering him to perceive that her own in, tuitive good taste and naturally delicate appreciation were as pure gold is to dross in comperison with his vulgar, upstart, parvens notions. While seeming to follow his advice in all her studies, she neverthe- lees in reality yielded implicit confidence to the sounder judgment and better tastes of the first- rate governess and masters who were engaged in her tuition. The result was that her mind ex- panded beneath the best possible influences, totally unaffected by that erroneous one which her father sought to shed upon every phase of ite develop- ment. For if she had listened to him, she would have devoted herself to the fashionable frivolities instead of to the substantialities of education: she would have becgme fitted only for a mere drawing- room doll—whereas she had turned out an intel- leotual and truly accomplished young lady. It may easily be supposed that with a mind so gifted and with an understanding so capacious as Zoe's, she could not have failed to observe the ways im which her father had obtained wealth. She knew him to be one who had speculated—if speculation it could be called—with all that cee ee eraness which invariably left im a gainer, h the enterprise itself should She know hkewise that he lent money to the pro- fiigate and the necessitows at a usurious rete, and never without security more or lees tangible: she knew that the extra of the patrician spendthrift and the embarrasements of the otrug- gling, hard-workizy, industrious trader, had been THE MYOTEHINS OF THY OOURT. o the sources of no inconsiderable part of his im- mense fortune. She was aware that he had scen poverty in palaces as well as in prisons—and had into both with no sympathising object, but for the mere purpose of availing himself of the preud lord’s wants or the poor tredesman’s neces- sities, as the means of aggrandising his own wealth. All this did Zoe know: and therefore she had a complete reading of her father’s heart. She knew that it was not merely hard, because hardness melte—and dis heart never melted; that it was not merely cold -—because coldness may relax, and his never relaxed: but she knew ite utter noshingnese in to all kindly sentiments when ng with the world—its complete impas- sability in the pursuance of a career which had aimply one aim: namely, money-making. All this Zoe knew ; and yet she loved her father. She would not suffer herself to ise him: she could not possibly hate him. She loved him be- cause she fancied—and in this instance only was her judgment at fault—that all he did for ber was the result of a doting fondness on his part. Of this fondness she behal the evidences in the sums be had spent upon her education—the cpnstant care which he made her take of her health— the visible pride with which he surveyed her iri his own sumptuous saloons —the separate equipages he kept for her—the lavish profusion with which he furnished her purse—the rich presents he was con- tinuously making he would sometimes hint that she ought to form a brilliant alliance—and the assurance he was con- etantly giving her that his only object in heaping up wealth was to endow her with those riches. Fine as Zoe's intellect was, and shrewd her under- standing, it is nevertheless not to be wondered at if, in her inexperience of the world, and the natural generosity of her heart, she should put the most favourable interpretation upon her father’s conduct towards her. But Mr. Armytage did really love his daughter, though it was a love after the fashion of his own sordid soul—a love that was made up of vulgar pride as much as of any other elément. He saw that she was beautiful, and he was proud of her: he heard her accomplishments spoken of, and he flattered himself that for these she was indebted much more to his own supervis- ing judgment than to the fine qualifications of her own intellect or to the proficiency of her governess and preceptors. To her only did he ever speak in accents of fondness: her influence alone could induce him to perform s charitable action. —though this he would emblazon with all the flaming hues of his own ostentation. But still Zoe saw how different he was to her than to the rest of the world: she attributed it to a pure paternal fondness ; and therefore was it that, with all his faults, she loved her father so tenderly and s0 well. Little did she think that this father of her's would drag her to the altar and immolate her as the sacrifice to a patrician alliance, rather than suffer her to proceed of her own accord to that altar, to bestow her hand on some plebeian object -Of her choice, if such choice she should happen to ber—the exultation with which - and who it was that had thus become the Zoe loved : object of her affections, will be presently seen. He whem she thus loved, was as yet totally ignorant (COL (C DOO CS (COL