Page 44 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

especially the large number of those to whom he owed mon-
ey. Of their opinions Isabel was never very definitely
informed; but it may interest the reader to know that, while
they had recognized 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 deplor-
ably 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 had had no regular educa-
tion and no permanent home; they had been at once spoiled
and neglected; they had lived with nursemaids and govern-
esses (usually very bad ones) or had been sent to superficial
schools, kept by the French, from which, at the end of a
month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the
matter would have excited Isabel’s indignation, for to her
own sense her opportunities had been large. Even when her
father had left his daughters for three months at Neufchatel
with a French bonne who had eloped with a Russian noble-
man staying at the same hotel—even in this irregular
situation (an incident of the girl’s eleventh year) she had
been neither frightened nor ashamed, but had thought it a
romantic episode in a liberal education. Her father had a
large way of looking at life, of which his restlessness and
even his occasional incoherency of conduct had been only a
proof. He wished his daughters, even as children, to see as
much of the world as possible; and it was for this purpose
that, before Isabel was fourteen, he had transported them

44 The Portrait of a Lady