A Fair Fraud — page 274: what you’re looking at

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

her lights, and she had represented to Hester all the home life she had ever known. Her end, tco, was so sad, so sudden, so utterly and entirély unexpected, that the shock of it up- set her fearfully. When she had stood beside the open grave, and had realised indeed that her beautiful and young-looking mother had been taken from her for ever, Hester turned away quite heartbroken from the last sad scene, and the fortitude and courage with which she had hitherto met her sorrow gave way, and she broke down so completely that for a long time she was really very seriously ill. The woman at the lodgings, who, if a bad cook and an indifferent lodging-house mistress, was at least a kind-hearted woman, nursed her for a day or two as well as she could, and then, by the doctor’s advice, $he was moved into an hos::ital, where after many days of fever, followed by a long period of nervous prostration, Hester’s youth and fine constitu- tion asserted themselves, and she slowly fought her way back to life and convalescence. And one day, when she was sitting up for the first time, looking as frail and white as a drooping lily, the nurse came to the side of her couch with a smiling face and a card in her hand. ‘Here's a lady come to see you, miss,’ she said, ‘and the doctor says she may sit with A Fair Fraud 263. GORMGIOO oO G' Q)