The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

140 REYNOLDS’ WORKS assurance he was constantly 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 understanding, 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 toward 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 element. He saw that she was beauti- ful, 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 supervising judgment than to the fine qualifications of her own intellect or to the pro- ficiency of her governess and preceptors. To her only did he ever speak in accents of fondness; her influence alone could induce him to perform a charitable action, though this he would emblazon with all the flaming hues of his own ostenta- tion. 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 so well. Little did she think that this father of hers 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 make. Zoe however had made no such choice. Yet she loved, and who it was that had thus become the object of her affections will be presently seen. He whom she thus loved was as yet totally ignorant that he had made any impression upon the mind of this charming young lady; no one suspected her love, neither her father nor her handmaids. The natural purity of her thoughts, blended with her maidenly dignity, had prevented her from betraying the secret by even the slightest sign whereby the sentiment of love is so often wont to reveal itself. At the time of which we are writing, Zoe’s love had not existed many months in her heart, and yet it was already profoundly rooted. It had entertwined itself, so to speak, with every fibre of her being. But it was a love entirely of the sentiment, and not of the sense, — a love which was strictly a sentiment, and not a passion, —a Gomicboo S) (E(0)