His Grace — page 268: what you’re looking at

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

262 HIS GRACE. Deverell’s niece with a passion which, by reason of the _ poverty of language, must be classed under the generic heading of love. On the succeeding afternoon I was meditating a visit to Upper Grosvenor Street, for the purpose of confer- ring with Nora, and making arrangements for her speedy removal to some place of shelter which I could call my own, when I was spared the trouble of rising from my chair by the arrival of my sister, who, before I could say a word, informed me that she meant to quit Lady Deverell’s house on the morrow. She had, it appeared, been made acquainted with the various episodes of the previous forty-eight hours; so that she was prepared to take up her abode with me provision- ally so soon as I should have laid down my present functions. “Only,” said she, “you won’t, of course, be able to leave the duke for some weeks to come, and I really can’t live any longer in the same house with Miss St. George. I am sorry to make a fuss; but you would admit that I have no choice in the matter if you had heard the way in which she spoke to me last night. It was at a great crush; the duke was there, and I sup- pose he must have given her to understand that he had no intentions. Anyhow, after they had been talking together for some time, she marched up to me in a towering passion, and charged me, in the plainest of plain terms, with having done my utmost to catch him. She didn’t mince matters; she said a worm might be a useful bait to attract a fish, but it wasn’t the worm who retained possession of him when he had been hooked, and I might take her word for it that, sly as I was, my -slyness wouldn’t be of any service to me. She was so Gomicboo “S (E(@)