A Fair Fraud — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

156. A Fair Fraud Cut Hester only shook her head, and tears choked her voice as she replied, ‘I cannot tell you. Do not ask me. You say that debt is not dishonour, but this— this thing is dishonour, and I cannot speak of it.’ | He dropped her hand as though it burnt him, and took a few rapid. steps backwards and forwards across the little room. ‘Dishonour!’ he echoed, almost broken- heartedly, for God knows what horrible suggestions flashed suddenly through his mind at the word. Then again he stopped before her, and all the pity and tenderness went out of his face. ‘There is a man in all this,’ he said bluntly and roughly. ‘ This money is not for yourself. It is for some fellow who is blackmailing you! Deny it if you can.’ She lifted her eyes slowly. They were haggard with pain and endurance, but she failed to grasp his meaning, she was only thinking herself of tie truth. ‘I do not deny it,’ she answered wearily. ‘Yes, itis for aman; but do not ask me any more. I must not say more.’ He had turned away from her with a gesture of inexpressibie disgust. Her admis- sion seemed to confirm his worst suspicions. She was not then the pure and stainless girl GOMMGIOO <S (GO) ee stn Onn a " oe