A Fair Fraud — page 115: what you’re looking at

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

104 ~ A Fair Fraud about him had been not so much at the thought of the sin itself as at the disgrace which he had brought upon herself and her mother in the eyes of friends and acquaint- ances. To hide that disgrace from the world had been the effort of both the child and her © mother ever since. She had learnt to lie glibly and easily—the false name—the story of her mother’s widowhood—the fiction of her late father’s position and profession, together with innumerable romances concerning their subsequent movements and occupations—all this had become second nature to her. Hester could talk as airily as did her mother about the princely castles abroad at which she had been a guest, and the distinguished noblemen who had laid their hearts at her feet, whereas the outsides of their walls had been all she had ever seen of the foreign palaces, and the only genuine offer of marriage she had ever received _ had been from a broken-down gambler, who had ruined himself at the green tables in her disreputable uncle’s apartments. And year after year the same weary battle went on— the battle against duns and debts and money- lenders. The endless struggle to dress up to the latest fashion, and to have the best of everything and to pay for nothing, and at the same time to escape Scot free from clamorous creditors. Many and many atime had Hester COMNMUC JOO <S (GO) uu