The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

8 REYNOLDS’ WORKS fortable little parlour, conversing with her, reading to her, looking over books with her, gazing upon her while she worked, and exchanging tender glances. Even the presence of her father was not felt as a restraint, for the old gentleman, when not dozing in his armchair, treated him with as much kindness as if he were a son, considered him as good as formally engaged to his daughter, and smiled upon them both. But if the father took no pains to make direct in- quiries into the young man’s prospects, the artless and un- sophisticated Eliza, it may be easily supposed, made none at all. She just knew that he was connected with the Viv- iandale family, and no more. As for there being anything selfish in her love, the Alpine snows were not purer. It was a youthful heart’s first virgin affection that was given to Ber- tram Vivian; on his side it was a young man’s first love, profound, glowing, impassioned, but all a dream, without the soberness of waking reflections. He paused not to ask himself whether this vision of bliss could ever be realized, whether it were possible that he should ever lead Eliza Lacey to the altar. The present was so full of rapturous enjoy- ment that he looked not beyond it. Youthful love is in itself faith and hope; it is the religion of the heart, as the worship of God is the religion of the soul. It has a sort of tacit reliance upon the future, without studying the grounds on which such reliance is based; it believes in paradise, as the worshipper of the Almighty believes in paradise also, without knowing when or how the period of enjoyment is to be brought about. Thus a year passed away from the date of Bertram’s acquaintance with the Laceys, when, in the middle of 1826, he was suddenly startled from his dream of bliss. A death in the family, by removing the old marquis, called another to assume the coronet, and the two young men were sum- moned peremptorily from Oxford to attend the funeral of the deceased peer. The same letter gave them to understand that the circumstance of their heavy debts had come to their father’s knowledge, that they must be careful to bring with them lists of their liabilities, with a view to their prompt and equitable settlement, and that they were to give notice to their tutors that they would return to Oxford no more. If it were a merely temporary separation from Eliza, Bertram could have borne it, as indeed he had borne, during the Gomichbooks (E(0)