His Grace — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

130 HIS GRACE. She answered quite seriously, “It would be a diff: cult thing to knock one’s head off, but it’s as easy as possible to fracture one’s skull or break one’s neck, and I should say that the duke was in a fair way to do the one or the other. | Of course, if anything should happen to him, Mr. Gascoigne would succeed to the title.” I have never met anybody like Miss St. George : nor, I should imagine can there be many people quite so im- perturbably and cynically candid. Nora affirms that what puzzles me about the woman is merely her nhe- nomenal stupidity, and that similar manifestations im a man would not surprise me at all. It may be so; but personally I am inclined to ascribe rather to supreme contempt for her hearer than to density my companion’s open avowal (for really it amounted to nothing less), that she was undecided whether to marry the Duke of Hurstbourne for the sake of his title or to wait a little longer, upon the chance of securing the title and Mr. Gascoigne’s wealth at one and the same time. She put a great many more questions to me about my patron and friend: she wanted to know whether he was a gambler; whether he had other vices that I knew of: whether the legitimacy of his birth had ever been called in question; what he or his mother had done to incur Lady Deverell’s dislike, why his father had been cut by the late duke, and so forth. I gave her such informa- tion as I thought fit, and then for my own amusement, endeavored to draw her out upon the subject of Mr. Gascoigne ; for I thought it would be interesting to hear her frank opinion of that gentleman. But readyas she was to cross-examine me, she had no notion of being cross-examined in her turn, and she disposed of my modest queries by the simplc and effectual method of (E(0) Gomicboo gS)