His Other Wife: A Novel — page 263: what you’re looking at

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

A_ MIDNIGHT VISITANT. 255 the celebrated Mr. Pearson, of Alabama, Croft proceeded to put his counsel in possession of the case, assuming that it was ‘‘a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing,” but, at the same time, admitting that there might be danger in the woman claiming to be his former wife, provided she had been clever enough to supply herself with well-authen- ticated testimony, shrewdly interwoven with circumstantial evidence. Croft felt it would be safest to proceed with the utmost caution, reserving any confessions for the dernier resort. He advised Mr. Fields to go at once to Lucerne and con- fer with the two women, Mrs. Foster and Miss Draper, concerning the whereabouts of their employer, ‘‘ Rachel Croft, as she persists in calling herself.” ‘«But, my dear sir, it seems to me that we encounter a very criminating fact at the outset—namely, your acquies- cence in the charge preferred against you by this mad woman, by assuming the charge of her daughter, and placing her household under the supervision of her two spies.” ““We can deal with that easily enough, Mr. Fields. There is nothing remarkable in a man of delicate sensi- bilities submitting to the most dreadful impositions rather than encounter the disgusting exposure of his private affairs in a public prosecution for a crime of which he 1s innocent. When you reflect that I was then but a week married to a beautiful and notable woman of-high socia connections, whose whole future must have been clouded EOmMmichoo “Si (E(e)