life came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness broken
only by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she passed them in
review. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very
fortunate person--this was the truth that seemed to emerge most
vividly. She had had the best of everything, and in a world in
which the circumstances of so many people made them unenviable it
was an advantage never to have known anything particularly
unpleasant. It appeared to Isabel that the unpleasant had been
even too absent from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her
acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of
interest and even of instruction. Her father had kept it away
from her--her handsome, much loved father, who always had such an
aversion to it. It was a great felicity to have been his
daughter; Isabel rose even to pride in her parentage. Since his
death she had seemed to see him as turning his braver side to his
children and as not having managed to ignore the ugly quite so
much in practice as in aspiration. But this only made her
tenderness for him greater; it was scarcely even painful to have
to suppose him too generous, too good-natured, too indifferent to
sordid considerations. Many persons had held that he carried this
indifference too far, especially the large number of those to
whom he owed money. Of their opinions Isabel was never very
definitely informed; but it may interest the reader to know that,
while they had recognised in the late Mr. Archer a remarkably
handsome head and a very taking manner (indeed, as one of them
had said, he was always taking something), they had declared that
he was making a very poor use of his life. He had squandered a
substantial fortune, he had been deplorably convivial, he was
known to have gambled freely. A few very harsh critics went so
far as to say that he had not even brought up his daughters. They