The Craze of Christina — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

The Craze of Christina. 65 CHAPTER V. Iw order fully to understand the various ele- ments which go towards the making up of the story of Mark Clifford’s succession to his uncle’s fortune, it is now necessary that we should go back to a period about a fortnight before that tea party at Esselton Hall which was destined to become almost an historic event in the for- tunes of several of the characters of my story. The scene must therefore change—in this ret- rospective view—to a London house in Burton Crescent, W. C., and to the ‘front parlor’’ of the ground floor apartments thereof, as let by a very unkempt and unattractive lodging-house landlady. In this front parlor a family party of three were assembled together one foggy morning in anxious consultation. An elderly man lay back in the only armchair in the room. He was very pale, and thin almost to emaciation, and seemed to have but recently recovered from a severe illness. He was, moreover, self-evidently poor and down in the world, from the shabbiness and raggedness CoONnicloooKSse@