A Fair Fraud — page 217: what you’re looking at

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

206 A Fair Fraud Naylor had never found the opportunity of speaking to him on the subject; ‘that is the man who has been killed, and she is weeping for him!’ And his heart grew hard and bitter at the thought, He walked straight up to his father. This fellow was not apparently the harmless loafer we took him for. Look, sir, what we have found in his pocket. Take care, it is ~ loaded,’ and he laid a revolver down before his father on the oak table in the centre of the hall. Mr Drury uttered a whistle of surprise. ‘This alters the complexion of the case. Perhaps but for this deplorable shot of yours, Mr Grigson,’ turning to the gasping Joseph, ‘this fellow might have murdered some of us. An innocent and harmless man does not go about with a loaded revoiver in his pocket.’ Meanwhile Mrs Lane was endea: ouring to soothe her daughter’s agitation, and Marion left her in her mother’s hands. Mrs Lane had scarcely expected Hester to behave ‘so cleverly, for that her fainting attack and her hysterical tears were genuine she did not give her the credit of supposing, and yet who could have imagined that Hester would have fallen into her own methods so aptly and readily ? ‘Come upstairs to your own rvom, my darling child,’ she said, quite in an audible COMmnic JOO