A Fair Fraud — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

A Fair Fraud 45 was spoken to. Mrs Lane talked a great deal, sometimes to her host and sometimes to Mrs Drury, whilst Captain Drury always sat next to Hester, and hardly addressed a word to anyone else. Mrs Lane was a voluble talker, and Mr Drury was a good deal impressed by her conversation, which ranged freely over many subjects— politics, arctic exploration, art, literature and domestic economy. If one subject did not suit her hearers she promptly started another, so that Uncle John said of her openly that she was a very well-informed and clever woman. Somehow, Marion did not agree with him, for she could not help observing that Mrs Lane’s conversation was extremely superficial. Very often she seemed to wait to express her views until Mr Drury had stated his own, and frequently she con- tradicted herself altogether. On the first of these evenings that Marion dined downstairs she could not help overhear- ing a few words that passed between Kenneth and Hester, probably because they were about herself. ‘Poor little thing!’ she heard Miss Lane murmur, and instinctively she knew that it was she who was the ‘ poor little thing.’ ‘It was just like you to ask my mother to let her come down. You are always doing kind and thoughtful things.’ ElOOO©