I Forbid the Banns! — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

84 ‘‘? FORBID THE BANNS!” The same evening Captain Waring learnt casually from Mrs. Hardy that her late brother had left property in Aus- tralia of such magnitude that the income it yielded was close upon twelve thousand pounds a year, and that all had been bequeathed unreservedly to his daughter Bertha, with the recommendation to allow her aunt a tenth part of. this income so long as she lived. Captain Waring had no foolish scruples about spreading abroad this information. He spread it abroad; and the result was certainly not to diminish the girl’s popularity among the men. Mrs. Howard was no more reticent on the subject of the information she had received than Captain Waring had been on the subject of the money, and the result in this case was not to increase the girl’s popularity with the women, But when Mrs. Howard, out of a pure feeling of the warmest friendship for Charlton, informed him that she had discovered that that pretty Miss Lancaster, poor thing, had had a convict for a father, which was not, of course, her fault, poor thing, but which was still a very melancholy subject for reflection, Charlton had such a fit of laughter as caused some consternation to the lady. Several minutes had elapsed before he had recovered himself sufficiently to be able to apologize for his rudeness, and to assure Mrs. Howard that he had rarely heard of anything so melancholy as the piece of news which she had just communicated to him. “You have a peculiar way of exhibiting your melancholy, Mr. Charlton, I must say,” remarked the lady, when he had found it impossible to refrain from yielding to another paroxysm. But when, in the course of the evening, Captain Waring told him that Mrs. Hardy had incidentally mentioned in her own guileless way that her niece’s income amounted to (€(0) (CEORMIELIOOKS