The Mysteries of the Court of London by Pauline Clarendon — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

THE BEAUTIFUL SISTERS 23 Mrs. Clarendon was a woman of fine feeling, generous sympathies, and keen sensibility, and her husband’s mis- fortunes preyed deeply upon her mind. She secretly re- proached herself with being the cause of the disgrace into which he had fallen in respect to his family, and, taking the matter to heart, literally pined away until she sank into the tomb. Mr. Clarendon now found himself left, at the age of five and thirty, with two young children totally dependent upon his care, and he resolved to perform his duty toward his motherless daughters. His family still persisted in dis- owning him, and he accordingly retired into some remote and cheap district, where he reared and educated the girls to the best of his means. They grew up in all the glory of maiden loveliness, but being deprived of the more delicate supervision of a mother, and having scarcely any female society in the seclusion which their father’s slender resources compelled him to adopt, their minds were not imbued with those strictly feminine principles which the maternal parent can alone inculcate, foster, and permanently establish. Their virtue wanted the stamina necessary to maintain it when it should have to pass through the world’s ordeal; it was rather of a negative quality than otherwise — existing because it had as yet undergone no temptation. Their religion was confined to a mere knowledge of the sacred writings, read and remembered like any other book, and believed in because they had been taught to hold that faith; but the deep conviction, the holy reliance, and the profound feeling, which constitute true religion, were deficient. They went to church with regularity, as many other giddy and thoughtless young ladies go, but they never had had any one to impress upon them the necessity of laying aside worldly thoughts, and throwing the whole soul into the divine wor- ship. Good-natured, affectionate, and light-hearted girls were Octavia and Pauline Clarendon; artless, frank, and innocent likewise were they, because totally ignorant of the world’s ways, and inexperienced in its snares, its perfidies, and its deceits. J When their education was completed, Mr. Clarendon, who had long been wearied of the dull seclusion in which he thus passed so many years, removec with his two daughters to London, and in one of the Paradise Villas had they been lo- cated about eighteen months at the time when our tale opens. CONnniclooolKs (GO)