A Fair Fraud — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 148 Naylor did not fail to remark. ‘I should be sorry to have so low an opinion of human nature as you have, Mr Naylor.’ ‘Now you are unjust to me, Miss Blake. You know very well that it is not in human nature generally which I disbelieve, but in Mrs and Miss Lane in particular. Have I not had good cause to doubt these two ladies?’ ‘You have xo good cause for doubting Hester,’ replied Marion, warmly. ‘I grant you that you may possibly have reasons for mistrusting her mother, but Hester must have been a child at the time of the circum- stances in which you were concerned. Can you give no credit to youth and innocence ?’ ‘Not when they are handicapped by an evil inheritance and by bad bringing up. A girl - who can consent to be known under a false name, and to become the guest of kind people who are deceived and hoodwinked into be- lieving her to be what she is not, and who lends herself to the unworthy scheme of trap- ping a rich man into offering marriage to her, is scarcely the kind of person whom I should credit with honourable motives and upright intentions!’ — ‘Have I not told you that Hester has re- fused to marry my cousin? He told me so himself before dinner.’ Mr Naylor shrugged his shoulders ex- pressively. K GOMMGIOO <S (GO) uu