What had
passed between them remained known only to Horace. But part of a sum
of money left by Sir Joseph's will towards the founding of a Harden
scholarship was transferred by a codicil to Lucia for her education.
The task begun by Horace Jewdwine was continued by a learned lady,
Miss Sophia Roots, B.A.; and Miss Roots did her work so well that when
Sir Frederick assumed his rightful guardianship of his daughter he
pronounced her the worst educated young woman in Europe. Of all that
Miss Roots had so laboriously imparted to her she retained, not a
smattering, but a masterly selection. And now at four and twenty she
had what is called a beautiful view of life; with that exciting book
which her father kept so sedulously out of her reach she was
acquainted as it were through anthologies and translations. For
anything Lucia knew to the contrary, life might be all bursts of lyric
rapture and noble sequences of selected prose. She was even in danger
of trusting too much to her own inspired version of certain passages.
But anthologies are not always representative, and nobody knew better
than Lucia that the best translations sometimes fail to give the
spirit of the original.
Something of this spirit she caught from her father's brilliant and
disturbing presence. Lucia adored her father. He brought into her life
an element of uncertainty and freedom that saved it from the tyranny
of books. It was a perpetual coming and going.
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