The Man in Possession — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

140 THE MAN IN POSSESSION. this house was not so pleasant that you should seek to make it worse. Now you have added to it all this scandal, for Lady Jocelyn is not likely to forgive me. ... And as for the other women. Well, surely you know the world well enough to know that the whole blame of this scene will fall upon my shoulders.” The young criminal only looked at her helpless and abashed, as one who knows his cause is hopeless. ‘It is quite true,” he said. ‘‘What I meant only to be a piece of harmless fooling has turned out a miserable tragedy.” ‘* But this is not all,” continued Kate, the inexor- able. ‘‘ May I ask you how you procured the infor- mation about myself which you were kind enough to repeat? Not but what half of it was pure guess-work and the other half untrue. Still, blundering and stupid as your pretended palmistry was, you must have been at some pains to get your clues and frame your guesses, ” But to this the young man could answer nothing. He felt he was helplessly and hopelessly in the wrong. Carefully a as he had laid his plans, he had quite for- gotten that that fatal bit of handwriting might be produced against him—quite forgotten that he had written out a few new speeches and suggestions for the duologue, and that Kate therefore was perfectly acquainted with his handwriting—and quite ignored the possibility that Sir Wilfred might be foolish enough to show his ‘‘magic card” to the last person 3 in the house who ought to have seen it. COMicloe (Sri C(O)