A Servant of Satan: Romantic Career of Prado the Assassin — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

A SERVANT OF SATAN. 123 Nina Vander Beck, who had reached that period of life when the passions are most easily aroused. When a woman on the wrong side of thirty-five falls in love she is generally apt to make a much greater fool of herself than a girl would do, and if the man she loves is some years her junior she in- variably makes an absolute idol of him, anxious, as it were, to make up in devotion and self-sacrifice for all that she feels may be missing in other respects. As to Frederick, he at last began to see his way to bring- ing to a close his stay at Batavia, of which he had become heartily sick. By means of the most insidious suggestions and advice, he prevailed upon Nina to cautiously and gradually realize all her husband’> available property. This, added to her own fortune, which was considerable, rendered her a very desirable prize indeed, and Frederick had all reason to congratulate himself on his luck. Mr. Van der Beck had been absent a little over four months, when Frederick one day applied for a four weeks’ leave of absence. This was readily granted by his colonel, with whom Frederick had remained on the most excellent terms, = Eomicbooks (E(0)