A Fair Fraud — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

92 A Fair Fraud moreover, that believing as I do that Miss Lane cares for him, I shall take her part as far as I am able, through thick and thin!’ She rose from the piano as she spoke and began shutting it up. Edgar Naylor rose too and looked at her. She was flushed and a little breathless, there was a certain brave candour about her words which appealed to him strongly. He said to himself that a weaker woman would have made a hundred futile excuses before she would have admitted the truth. But this girl had not been afraid to imply the real reasons of her refusal. He looked her over from head to foot; how frail and tiny and timid she looked, this little girl of humble position in her white muslin frock of innocence ; but what a brave good heart flashed through her kindling eyes, what a friend she might be, what a partisan! He met her eyes; they were, he fancied, a little defiant as they looked up straight into his. She would not be his friend, he feared— nay, would she not sooner be his foe? He bowed his head beneath her glance. ‘Lucky the man,’ he murmured, ‘whose happiness is dear to such a woman as you are |’ He had spoken the words before he had féalised all that they might imply, but the _ crimson flush that flamed from her brow to GOMMGIOO <S (GO) uu