A Fair Fraud — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

56 A Fair Fraud The three of them she supposed were there. How nice it must be to skate and cycle and amuse oneself all day long, especially with such a companion as Kenneth Drury! What a happy girl Hester Lane must be! In spite of all that Aunt Fanny had said, Marion felt convinced that they loved ‘each other, and that Mrs Lane, far from being the conscientious, high-minded chaperone she re- presented herself to be to Mrs Drury, was conniving at their love affairs. What more natural? What more praiseworthy? And Marion’s romantic soul went out in sympathy both with the mother and her child. Yet was Hester worthy of him? There lay the doubt in her own faithful heart. And do what she would, Marion could not suppress the constant feeling of mistrust and suspicion which haunted her on the sub- ject of these two women. Were they true? Were they sincere? Above all, were they what they represented themselves to be? These were questions she found herself wholly unable to answer. The frozen lake, when she reached its margin, was bare and empty at its upper and broader extremity. It was an artificial piece of water, and curved in the shape of a crescent away behind a thick grove of woods, which at the further end swept down to the edge of the C(O) CORNICLOOOKS.: