I Forbid the Banns! — page 307: what you’re looking at

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

ON BEING A PERSONAGE. 297 There was money in each of these things, he was assured. He had ventured into none of these fields of enterprise. He had simply devoted himself; with considerable success, to the discovery of a practicable unit for the measurement of the centrifugal force put into action in the spinning of a humming top. He had thus obtained a name among the scientific workers of the day, and had been for some seasons new and interesting to society. He was not deceived by the arctic appearance of Bertha’s table every morning. Those hummocks of snowy cards did not deceive him into fancying that they were sent with the sole device of giving pleasure to Bertha. He knew that they had been sent in order to increase the success of the entertainments to which they referred. He often wondered if it was known in any direction in town that Bertha and he had never gone through the ceremony of marriage together. He had seen Marian Travers and Cyril Southcote more than once at large “* At Homes ’’—so called probably because the hostess was less at home than anyone else—and he wondered if either Marian or Cyril had taken the trouble to narrate the scene which had occurred in the drawing room at the Court, when Lady Rushton had made her call. Julian was indif- ferent on the matter. He knew that, if it were to become universally known that he and Bertha had not gone through any ceremony of marriage together, the invitation cards would continue to arrive as plentifully as ever. The people in London society have no time to think of such things as morals. They want something new and interest- ing, and they do not care whether or not it comes to them in a questionable shape, so long as it comes. ‘The divorce court has provided London society with many of its new and interesting heroines. Julian noticed that Bertha did not now show any desire CONIC IOOKS.EO)|