His Grace — page 263: what you’re looking at

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

HIS GRACE. 20% I mean, | was glad that he has no real affection for that girl ; because she isn’t anice girl. Paul Gascoigne may take her, if he can get her, and I wish him joy of his bargain. It isn’t that sort of thing that signi- ifies.” What, according to her, did signify, was the pessi- mistic view which Hurstbourne had taken up of a by- gone and condoned offence. I agreed with her that no shadow of blame rested upon him, but I could not quite follow her in her elaborate attempt to prove that the late Lord Charles Gascoigne had not been so very much to blame either. She had a good deal to say upon the subject; she made out as good a case for her husband as could have been made out. It is likely enough that her husband would have resisted temp- tation as successfully as the rest of us, if only he had not happened to find temptation irresistible. The touching part of her incoherent narrative consisted in the unconscious evidence of her own absolute unself- ishness which she displayed in every sentence of it. She had married a more or less penitent scapegrace, whom she had adored, and who had perhaps been fond of her after a fashion which had not deterred him from squandering her fortune ; when he had been taken from her, she had devoted herself, heart and soul, to her son, for whose sake she had cheerfully - submitted ‘to a thousand discomforts and petty mis- eries; the only thing that rendered her disconsolate now was that, notwithstanding all her precautions, her son had at length been let into a secret which, she sadly feared, had broken his heart. I endeavored to reassure her. Naturally she did not attach much importance to my assertion that hearts 17 (ECOVAMCel eoXe) cS (E(0) m