A Fair Fraud — page 169: what you’re looking at

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

158 A Fair Fraud Now you see for yourself that I was right, and that I am not fit to marry you.’ ‘But this money you asked me for—you did not want it this afternuon? You said nothing about it then ?’ ‘No, I did not know then.’ ‘Then scmething happened after I parted from you?’ ‘Yes, something happened.’ “You met—this man?’ ‘Yes, I met him.’ Again there was silence between them. And it seemed to Kenneth Drury that the whole story lav pieced out before him, and that he had guessed it all. The story of an adventuress, whose past was disreputable, and whose trade it was to obtain money out of the men who succumbed to her beauty for the benefit of a scoundrel, who in the back- ground of her life maintained some powerful and disgraceful held over her. Hester was very far from divining the degrading position he attributed to her. The truth was so appallingly present to her, the dismay of her father’s close proximity and the deadly terror of his threats against her lover’s life had so paralysed her heart and her nerve that she was quite unable to see that her words and admissions, coupled with her request for this money, might easily bear a GOMMGIOO <S (GO) uu