A Fair Fraud — page 220: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 209° ‘Mamma! mamma! how was I to speak and betray you? It is for you to tell him all! For Heaven’s sake, go to Captain Drury and tell him the truth, and then let us leave this miser- able house.’ ‘My dear girl, you must be going out of your mind. Tell him, indeed! at the very moment when I am free at last, when all fear of detec- tion is atan end. Tell him what? That this miserable out-at-elbows ex-convict was my husband and your father? Why on earth should I be such a fool? I’ve got rid of the incubus for ever, thanks to Joseph Grigson’s gun, and there is nobody to dog me or black- mail me, and drag up my past disgrace any more. Oh, I could dance for joy!’ and Mrs Lane actually executed a fas seul of exuber- ance round the room. ‘Oh, mamma, how can you?’ cried Hester, deeply shocked by her mother’s levity. ‘ After all, he was your husband, and you must have loved him once, long ago, when you were both young, and before he fell into the temptation that led to his ruin. How can you blot out the days when you loved him? He has never been anything to me but a terror and a re- proach ; but at least I cannot forget that he was my father, and that he has died a sudden and violent death, and he is lying now—now whilst we are talking here—outside the house close O GORMGIOO oO G' Q)