A Fair Fraud — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

180 A Fair Fraud He did admire and like her immensely, and had admitted as much to her guardian; but if the hints that had been given to him had been wholly premature, they had at any rate in no way affected his ulterior purposes, nor had they caused in him one thought towards herself that was not loyally trustful. ‘Poor little girl!’ was what he had said to himself when he went to bed last night. ‘For all that she has such a comfortable home and rich benefactors, it is evident that she has never received any real love or tenderness from them. They work her to death, and treat her as a dependant, and they are ready to get rid of her to the first comer! How that clever little mind and generous soul would expand and unfold in a really congenial atmosphere! in a home where love and intelligent appreciation would surround her!’ | For Edgar Naylor's fastidious fancy had been won, not so much by Marion’s pretty looks as by her keen and clever wits. He had known many pretty girls before, and they had in- variably bored and wearied him, but he had never yet talked to a girl who was as clever as she was pretty, and it was the combination that had attracted him. But he neither meant to hurry himself nor to hurry her, for all her uncle’s hints and sugges- tions; and as to declaring himself after a two COMNMUC JOO <S (GO) uu