A Fair Fraud — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 3 entirely false belief are always to be pitied, and at this early period of her career Marion Blake had committed the egregious folly of believing herself to be in love—hopelessly in love, mind you!—with Captain Kenneth Drury. It is a mistake not infrequently made by romantic and sentimental young ladies in their teens, to fancy themselves enamoured of gentlemen who are totally and blissfully unconscious of their flatter- ing partiality ; and in Marion’s case the delusion was certainly unpardonable, because not only had Captain Drury never paid her any loverlike attentions at all, but he was also the very last p:rson in the world whom reason and common sense shouid have allowed her to fix her affec- tions upon. Captain Kenneth Drury was an only son, heir to Crookthorpe Hall and its surrounding acres, and to the large fortune which his father had made a good many years ago during a boom in African gold mines—at a time when African gold mines were not so down on their luck as they are at the present day. Moreover, Kenneth Drury was a very smart ‘young man about town’ indeed. He was in the Guards, and a member of three or four first-class clubs ; he frequented Belgravian drawing-rooms, and was regarded with kindly eyes by many fair dames and damsels in the great world. He went to a great many grand parties, and his GOMMGIOO oO C' Q)