A Fair Fraud — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

66 A Fair Fraud For Marion Blake, although she was so small and shy, so insignificant in position, and in many ways so simple and so ignorant of the world and its ways, was nevertheless no fool at all, and she had been quite clever enough to understand a great deal of the conversation she had overheard. To begin with, it was clear to her that the name of Lane by which these two ladies were known, was not their real name, and it was alsu plain that there was some mystery in Mrs Lane’s life connected with the shabby man who had threatened her and demanded money of her. Who was this man? and what was the hold he held over this beautiful and refined lady ? To the first of these questions Marion, after turning it over and over in her mind,-cuould fiad but one answer. The man was clearly not old enough to be Mrs Lane’s father, for, although his hair was grey, he could hardly be more than fifty years of age, and if he was not her father, then he must be Her husband —and therefore she was not a widow at all, as she represented herself to be, but a woman with a disreputable husband in the background, of whom she was rightly ashamed. This con- clusion, which was the only one which she could arrive at, filled poor Marion with dismay and distress. For these women were evidently y COMME DOO@ Sp! C(O) i