A Fair Fraud — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

42 A Fair Fraud Lane’s face was not a genuine effect of nature, and she was frankly disgusted. ‘Better to look fat and middle-aged and decent like dear Aunt Fanny,’ she gaid to herself, ‘than to affect a juvenile appearance by such false methods as those!’ Neverthe- l:ss Marion felt instinctively that Hester was better than her mother. She, at least, could net be rouged and painted; her beauty, at any rate, was genuine. Yet was her character so slso? Marion did not wish to do her an in- justice, yet she could not help suspecting that Miss Lane was not altovether sincere, else why did she turn her kind old hostess into ridicule ? After breakfast, when they were all moving across the hall, Miss Lane addressed herself to the little insignificant companion. ‘Don’t you cycle or skate, Miss Blake?’ ‘I have never tried to do either,’ ‘Why not? You, at any rate, are young enough, I suppose ?’ ‘I am twenty.’ “We are the same age, then. Why on earth don’t you do things ?’ ‘J—don’t think my uncle and aunt would allow me to do those kind of things,’ Marion replied with hesitation. ‘You sce, I have my daily duties indoors,’ ‘You mean they keep you mewed up in the Sp! C(O) GOMMGIOO