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 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 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 had
had no regular education and no permanent home; they had been at
once spoiled and neglected; they had lived with nursemaids and
governesses (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.
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