A Fair Fraud — page 197: what you’re looking at

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

186 A Fair Fraud could almost feel the keen eagerness of the eyes she was tuo shy to meet. For half a minute she was silent; then, with a little fugitive smile upon her lips, she answered softly, ‘I am as fond of Kenneth as if he were my brother.’ He drew a breath of relief. That had been the stumbling-block in his path. The fear that her affections were already given to her handsome cousin, and the dread that in her grief at his preference for another woman she might decline altogether to listen to any proposal of m i:rriage. ‘And as his sister,’ he resumed presently in a voice of perfect content, ‘you would rejoice at this not altovether satisfactory marriage?’ ‘Yes; because I believe that Hester loves him. However false and mercenary her mother may be, Hester, I am sure, is the victin of circumstances—a real love will be her salvation. I am convinced that she will begin a new life as his wife.’ ‘And how about the sham name and the convict father? How 1s she going to get over those little difficulties?’ ‘Oh, Mr Naylor, you can understand very little about the nature of a true woman if you can doubt for a moment that Hester herself will tell Kenneth everything before she marries him !—it is because she loves him that she has COMNMUC JOO <S (GO)