The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 229: what you’re looking at

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

CONCLUSION OF THE MYSTERIES 207 Our heroine’s studies progressed most rapidly. All her habitual indolence seemed shaken off, and Mrs. Arbuthnot found her most assiduous as well as most intelligent in the various branches which she had been enjoined to cultivate. For Venetia, as above stated, not only had her ambition to gratify, but also to expel disagreeable thoughts; and hence her unwearied application to her music, her drawing, the books that had been provided for her, and her studies in all the fashionable refinements of demeanour, attitude, and manner. We have already described her as possessing a vigorous intellect and the keenest appreciation of all that was necessary for her to learn in order to play with pro- ficiency the grand part entrusted to her; and it can therefore be no matter of surprise if in the comparatively short space of a couple of months she should have undergone the com- pletest transformation from the inexperienced Clara Stanley of a humble dwelling at Canterbury into the brilliant Venetia Trelawney of Acacia Cottage. When occasionally visiting Miss Bathurst of an evening, Venetia met Horace Sackville. And here we may as well observe that this young man was the illegitimate son of Miss Bathurst, but the prince regent was not his father. Indeed, this fact his Royal Highness knew full well, for it is to be hoped, for the honour of humanity, that if it had been otherwise, that is to say, if Horace were really the prince’s son, the prince never would have intrigued with his own son’s wife. Horace’s father was another person with whom Miss Bathurst had been intimate in her time, but the young man himself had never been suffered to learn the exact particulars of his birth. He had been all along taught to believe that he was an orphan, indebted to the bounty of his aunt, Miss Bathurst, and as he grew up he had not chosen to ask many questions upon the subject. The liking that the prince took to him was merely one of the royal whims and caprices, and as Horace had many natural good qualities, and never took an improper advantage of the prince’s favour, he did not forfeit it. From all that has transpired throughout our long tale relative to the character of Horace Sackville, it will be seen that he was endowed with all the necessary qualifications to render him an amiable, worthy, and even high-minded young man, had not his good princi- ples been warped and the best feelings of his nature (CO) nn) GDoOo <Sii nin