A Fair Fraud — page 185: what you’re looking at

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

174 A Fair Fraud Mrs Lane this evening, and have told her that, if Hester will give her consent, we shall not withhold ours! You see, although she has no fortune—they ‘live upon Mrs Lane’s pension, she tells me, which just suffices for their ex- penses of dress and living; but Hester is very well connecied, the late Mr Lane was a man of good family, I understand, and they have moved in the very best society at home and abroad; besides which, she is beautiful and amiable, and deeply attached to our toy, so I am sure, although he might have made a more brilliant match, yet he could not, on the whole, make a happier one.’ Marion listened to this long exordium in silence with thoughtful eyes fixed upon the fire. The little fictions about the late Mr Lane and the high society scarcely amused her as she thought about Bradford, the ragged tramp, the liberated convict, whom she had scen with her own eyes so litely. Surely Mrs Lane was a bold woman, as well as a clever one, to play for such high stakes upon the edge of such a precipice! Marion wondered if it was not after all perhaps her duty to give her aunt one word of warning concerning the veracity of Mrs Lane’s statements. But then, again, she re- membered that her cousin’s happiness was in the balance, and that any injudicious step might ruin his whole life. The tangled skein of his GOMMGIOO <S (GO)