A Fair Fraud — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud oI venturess whom you know to be figuring under an assumed name? whom you may guess to be only willing to marry him because he is rich? sooner than speak those few words which might save him from so disastrous a union?’ He waited curiously for her answer. It came at length in a low and serious voice, after some moments of thought. ‘You think, perhaps, that it 1s because I am a coward that I refuse to do what youask. But itis not that. If I believed her to be actuated only by those mercenary motives to which you allude, then I think I should not hesitate for a moment to undertake the mission which you suggest to me. But however much I may believe you to be right with regard to the mother, I am convinced that you are doing the daughter a gross injustice. 1 am sure that Hester Lane loves my cousin, and you tell me that he has confessed his love for her to you. Why should the lives of two people be ruined because of the sins of their parents? I call it neither fair nor right that they should not have their chances of happiness just like others. That a woman should be made to suffer for the sins of her father i$ one of the cruellest things that can beimagined! No, Mr Naylor, I will not undertake what you wish, and render my cousin unhappy ; and it is just because his happiness is dear to me that I warn you, CONN LOC) <S (GO) uu