A Fair Fraud — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

28 A Fair Fraud astonishing celerity during the next few days. Innocence and ignorance had hitherto preserved the fresh purity of childhood upon her. But the time was at hand when she was to put away childish things for ever. The visit of Mrs and Miss Lane was destined to be fraught with important consequences to Mrs Drury’s com- panion. Miss Blake, not having been commanded by her patroness to join the dinner-party down- stairs, ate her dinner up in her little attic sitting- room that ‘evening, and consequently she did not see the newly-arrived guests again that day. This did not trouble or annoy her in the least. She was quite content to retire to her own cosy room when she was not wanted downstairs, and she did not lovk upon a soli- tary evening as a hardship at all. She sat up rather late finishing some letters to two of her numerous sisters whom she never saw now, but to whom, each in turn, she made a point of inditing long letters describing her life— letters that were duly answered by her scattered sisterhood. The bedrooms occupied by Mrs and Miss Lane opened one out of the other and were situated immediately beneath Marion's rooms, and could she have been gifted with the miraculous gift of seeing and hearing through ceilings and floors, she would have been con- 2 + GOMMGIOO Sp! C(O)