A Fair Fraud — page 202: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XIV THERE was no question as to the ladies join- ing the shcoting- party at lunch to-day, the weather alone rendering such a proceeding im- possible. A misty drizzle set in soon after breakfast, which looked as if it were determined to last all day. The Lanes came down to breakfast very late—after Mrs Drury herself had finished and left the dining-room—and the mother and daughter discussed the meal somewhat drearily together at the very fashionably late hour of eleven o'clock. Mrs Lane looked very crosy and Miss Lane looked very miserable. Hester had informed her mother of her rcfusal of Captain Drury’s proposal, but not of her interview with him on the previous evening. Neither had she told her of her en- counter with her father in the woods, nor of his threats and extortionate demands. She felt so thoroughly ashamed and degraded in her own estimation at having been compelled to beg for money at the hands of a man she had just 191 GORMGIOO