A Fair Fraud — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 7 her forlorn loneliness, sitting there trying to grasp the narrow limits of her future life which her rich benefactor was laying down for her — instruction. She was not in the least proud or sensitive, or perhaps she might have been angry and offended, for Mr Drury was certainly rather pompous and patronising, and, young as she was, she was made to understand that she must never forget that she was a ‘poor relation,’ and that she must not presume on her position, or overstep the boundary line that would for ever divide her from her betters. And, perhaps, if it had only been ‘ Uncle John’ with whom she had to do, poor Marion Blake would have been a very unhappy girl. But Mrs Drury— ‘Aunt Fanny ’ as she was told to call he:—was of a softer, gentler nature than her lord, and her heart warmed to the little, desolate, black- robed orphan, who came creeping shyly be- hind her husband’s burly form into the lighted hall at Crookthorpe on that winter evening five years ago, when he had brought her home. Aunt Fanny was kind and gentle to her orphan charge, and Marion soon grew very. fond of her. Nevertheless, Aunt Fanny, too, gave her clearly to understand that if she was housed and fed and warmed at Crookthorpe, She must by no means imagine that she was GOMMGIOO oO C' Q)