A Fair Fraud — page 242: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 231 must have been all in a league together to rob us! It’s lucky we weren’t murdered in our beds! And as to the spoons and forks, I must get hold of Horner as soon as ever lunch is over downstairs, and tell him to go and count them over; ten to one we shall find a lot of the plate missing !’ Marion could not help laughing. ‘My dear aunt, it doesn’t make them thieves because the man was dishonest once a great many years ago!’ she reasoned. | But. Mrs Drury would not listen to reason, ‘To think that fearful man—Bradford was his name, wasn't it ?—should have been hanging about our woods for a week and we never knowing it, and sheltering his family here all the while! Oh, don’t talk to me, Marion! Do you suppose I am a fool, that I can’t see that the whole thing was a conspiracy to rob and murder us all? And think of my poor, inno- cent Kenneth, so taken in by that wretched girl’s lies and hypocrisies that he made her an offer of marriage! Just think what an escape he has had!’ ‘Dearest aunt, I don’t really think they are as bad as you fancy. I am sure they have been more unhappy and unfortunate than wicked.’ ‘l’ve no patience with you, Marion, taking their part like that against your own flesh and GORMGIOO