The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

4 REYNOLDS’ WORKS of his position and courageously obeying its impulses in spite of all other considerations. But fortunately for him, something occurred which turned all his thoughts and all his feelings into a completely new channel. The brothers had been about a year at the university — they were now respectively somewhat past twenty-one and nineteen — when Bertram accidentally formed the acquaint- ance of a half-pay captain in the army and his daughter. The gentleman, whose name was Lacey, was stricken in years; he had married late in life, — one child was the issue of this alliance, — but the event which rendered him a father made him also a widower. His means were limited, but he had done his best to rear his darling Eliza in a becoming manner. He had stinted himself to give her a good education, and as she grew up in loveliness and in virtue, she rewarded him for his care with the most devoted affection. Sensible of the numerous sacrifices which her father had made on her account, she felt that no degree of tenderness could be too sreat wherewith to recompense such a parent. His will, therefore, was her law, and if he had demanded any sacrifice at her hands, even that of her life, she would have made it resignedly, nay, more, cheerfully. And exquisitely beautiful was Eliza Lacey. A year younger than Bertram Vivian, that is to say, with eighteen summers upon her head at the time their acquaintance was formed, youth and health lent all their charms to her face and figure. <A cloud of raven tresses fell around her oval countenance; her complexion was matchless in its trans- parent purity, pale on the lofty, expansive brow, dazzlingly fair on the softly rounded shoulders, the arching neck, and the Hebe-modelled bust, but with the rich carnation tint upon the cheeks, and with a still more vivid and a riper crimson on the lips. The delicately pencilled raven brows arched nobly above eyes that were large and dark, and which though so bright had an ineffable sweetness of ex- pression. Her features were outlined with a perfect regu- larity, and her teeth were as white as pearls. A little above the medium stature of woman, her figure, just in all its pro- portions, had a certain graceful and flowing roundness in the contours and in the limbs, which added to its marvellous symmetry. All her movements, even to the slightest gesture, were characterized by an unstudied elegance, and thus, in Gomichbooks (E(0)