A Fair Fraud — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

100 A Fair Fraud ‘Well, but if he is going to do that, every- _ thing will be found out.’ ‘Yes, but if you and Kenneth understand one another by then, it won't so much matter. There will be a row, of course, but we shall weather the storm. Kenneth Drury is not a boy, and he’s not likely to give up the woman he loves and is engaged to simply because her father was a convict. He won't like it, of course, but if you play your cards properly he will stick to you all the same.’ ‘Mother,’ said Hetty, very seriously, ‘I ought not to marry Kenneth Drury. I shall be doing a very wicked thing if I marry him.’ ‘Don't be a fool, Hetty. Why shouldn't you marry him, pray? You must marry some- body ?’ ‘I ought not to be any decent man’s wife, or enter into any respectable family, and that is the plain truth! Oh, mother, let us go back to the old life! It was odious enough, God knows, but at least it was frankly honest.’ ‘You will make me very angry, Hetty, if you say things like this! Go back to the old life indeed! to Uncle Simon's dirty apart- ments in a third-rate German town, that reeked of smoke and of beer. To sit up every night of our lives smiling and fawning upon all those horrible men that used to come flocking up GOMMGIOO <S (CONN