His Other Wife: A Novel — page 256: what you’re looking at

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

548 _ AN UNYUST STEWARD. man had ranked first in point of talent and seniority at the bar of the State when Croft began the practice of law in The indefatigable zeal, energy, tact, and superior abilities of the interloper did much to retrench both the practice and the popularity of Mr. Craig; besides this, Croft had failed to render the elder man that defer- ence which his age and position entitled him to receive from the junior members of the bar. A silent but bitter animosity had subsisted between these two from the first, and time had not softened it. To have his management of Mrs. Morgan’s property looked into and called to account by this man, would have been an insufferable thought to Croft, even had there been nothing to conceal from the public eye. But, counting on the ignorance of business and con- fiding disposition of his fair client, Croft had so directed events as to put the estates of the late Colonel Morgan in such a condition that, with an appearance of great liber- ality and forbearance en his part, they must, in the end, pass into his possession, as the just equivalent of repeated advances of money made on crops that were never raised. It would be tedious to explain the means by which all this had been accomplished. ‘He had taken care that his accounts should wear a correct aspect when examined by . the unprofessional eye of the widow, and he had never calculated on any investigation of them. On his return from the interview with Mrs. Morgan, he revolved the situation most carefully in his inventive brain, GComicbooks iGO