The Craze of Christina — page 208: what you’re looking at

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

204 The Craze of Christina. that the English language can boast of, I be- lieve—that is no more than I expected. But an extraordinary thing has happened; it seems that Charles Greville is dead.’’ ‘Really? How does Mr. Scrubb know?”’ ‘“‘Greville’s solicitors, Messrs. Chase, have apprised him of the fact; he seems to have died quite lately.”’ ‘**How does that affect you?”’ ‘‘Well, it doesn’t affect me materially, of course, because Miss Greville, the eldest daugh- ter, will now be the recipient of the fifty thou- sand pounds I[ have lost instead of her father.”’ *‘Lucky girl! I say, Mark, you ought to marry her! Why don’t you set off for Australia at once and make love to her?”’ ‘**Don’t talk nonsense, darling.”’ **No, but really I mean it. It seems almosta duty that you should at any rate go and make her acquaintance,and see if you could bring yourself to marry her, She may be a very charming girl for all we know.”’ ‘She is pretty certain to be nothing of the sort. Colonial-bred girls are mostly common and bad-mannered; besides if she were a Venus and a Minerva rolled into one it wouldn’t matter to me! You are the only woman on earth for me, Chris, and I must say I think it rather horrid Comichbooks:ce