A Fair Fraud — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

86 A Fair Fraud answered earnestly. For a moment she could not trust herself to speak, her fingers flew rapidly over the keys, she had broken into a popular air out of a comic opera, and the tune rang out almost wildly from the twinkling ivory keys. ‘You think him in danger, then?’ she asked at length. ‘Certainly he is in danger. He spoke to me after dinner of this woman’s daughter ; he spoke in raptures of her looks and her charms, and confided to me that he intended to ask her to be his wife at the earliest possible opportunity.’ ‘You mean—?’ she faltered a little faintly. ‘I mean that there is no time tobe lost, and that this marriage must never take place. Look here, Miss Blake, you are a sensible girl, and I can speak to you openly. It fell to my lot to cross-examine Mrs Lane in the witness-box about ten years ago. There were two scoundrels who were tried and. convicted of an extensive forgery—a forgery of bank notes it was—and her husband was one of them. The other man was named Drew, they were, both of them, clerks at the bank. Mrs Lane was subpcenaed by the counsel for the — defence on behalf of the man Drew, and it fell to my lot to cross-examine her and her French maid, who was also mixed up in the business. GOMMGIOO <S (GO)