A Fair Fraud — page 268: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 257 declaring that she had ruined both their lives, But for Hester, her mother constantly told her, they would now be well off and happy. It was in vain that Hester assured her that Captain Drury had almost pledged himself to renew his offer of marriage to her in six months’ time. Mrs Bradford only pooh-poohed the idea, and obstiriately refused to believe her. ‘If he had meant it, why didn’t he marry you at once ?’ she inquired fractiously. ‘ Because I myself desired that he would wait six months before binding himself to a convict’s daughter,’ Hester replied. ‘And you are such a fool as to imagine that any man will keep constant to a woman whom he never sees for six whole months? Give me my blotting-case at once, you donkey! I shall write to Captain Drury myself and desire him to come here.’ “You cannot. He has gone abroad, yachting, I am told. I do not even know his address,’ ‘Then you will never see him again, take my word for it. You have let him slip through your fingers for good and all this time! He will meet some other woman abroad, of course, and a fine chance you will have, with those horrid old parents of his, too, dead against you! How will you feel, pray, when you see his engagement to someone else in the Morning Post ?’ R JOO oO G' Q)