The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

THE BROTHERS 5 every respect, was she the rarest model of feminine beauty. Her disposition was amiable and good, naturally trustful and confiding; incapable of guile herself, she suspected it not in others. Scandal and malice, jealousy and envy, were known to her only by name, beyond which she had no experience of them. Her manners and her conversation were modelled by her character, — frank, artless, and fas- cinating. Yet though so utterly unacquainted with the darker sides of humanity and the treacheries of the world, she was not on this account to be regarded as an easy victim for seductive perfidy; her very innocence was in itself a defence. The intuitive sense of her sex’s dignity and of virginal propriety would in a moment have led her to resent the slightest word that shocked, or the first look that threat- ened her with insult. Such was Eliza Lacey. She dwelt with her father in a small but comfortable house on the outskirt of the University City, their only attendant being an elderly female who was in Captain Lacey’s service at the time of his marriage, and who had therefore known his charming and interesting daughter from the moment of her birth. Captain Lacey, on leaving the army and settling down into married life, had fixed his abode at Oxford, not exactly through choice, but from the fact that the death of a relative had bequeathed him a small property consisting of three houses. In one of these he lived; the other two were let, and the moderate rentals derived therefrom, added to his own half-pay, con- stituted his entire income. This was small enough, but still, by dint of the strictest frugality, the little family was en- abled to maintain a respectable appearance and avoid debt. The possession of the houses likewise relieved Captain Lacey’s mind from the bitter anxiety which he would otherwise have felt at the thought of death snatching him away from the world ere his daughter should be comfortably settled in it, for though his half-pay would die with him, yet the rents of the little property would produce a sufficiency for the subsistence of her who would be left behind him. Thus, though well aware that the city of Oxford was by no means the most suitable place for a beautiful girl, as Eliza was, to reside in, Captain Lacey was in a certain measure chained to the spot; and, moreover, he trusted to his daughter’s admirable principles as a sufficient safeguard Gomicbooks (E(O)