The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 170: what you’re looking at

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

ZOE 147 this time the deep-drawn sigh could not be altogether stifled. However, the next day beheld him again a visitor at Mr. Armytage’s house. How could he help going thither on this occasion? He had a piece of new music of which he had spoken on the preceding day, and which he had volunteered to bring Zoe. It was a duet, and as Mr. Armytage was present in the drawing-room when Octavian was ushered thither, there was no impropriety in his offering to sing it with the young lady. They did sing it. Octavian thought that never had Miss Armytage displayed her musical accomplishments with so fine an effect, never had her loveliness appeared more angelically charming. When he took his leave after this visit, he had far less difficulty in putting aside the image of the beauteous unknown, or in suppressing the rising sigh, than he had experienced on the preceding day. On the following day he called upon Zoe again, and for nearly each successive day for the ensuing six weeks. On every occasion he became, or fancied that he became, more profoundly enam- oured of Miss Armytage; he saw himself received with a gradually increasing cordiality on the part of the father, and with an unchanging affability on that of the daughter. He seldom thought now of the beauteous unknown; less seldom did he find himself sighing when her image did happen to rise up to his mental vision. But did Zoe herself love him? Was he indeed not indifferent to her? Or did she regard him merely as a visitor with whom a sort of intellectual friendship had sprung up? This question puzzled him; he had never seen on Zoe’s part the slightest betrayal of any tender partiality toward him. What if he were to offer and to be refused? Such a catastrophe would be terribly humili- ating to his manly pride, and in this frame of mind, hovering between hope and uncertainty, it was by no means difficult for Octavian Meredith to persuade himself that he loved Miss Armytage to a degree that his very happiness depended upon their alliance. To do him ample justice, the more he had seen of her and the more he had felt himself attracted toward her, the less he had thought of the pecuniary advan- tages to be derived from such a marriage. The naturally noble feelings of his disposition, by inducing him to scorn the thought of mere selfish interest, led him to believe that his sentiment toward Zoe was now altogether a disinterested EORNICLIOOKS (C(O)