His Grace — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

106 HIS GRACE, be sure, interest him a hundred times more than yours —which, after all, is only natural.” “You do the duke an injustice,” said Nora; “he doesn’t forget you when you are out of his sight. He looks upon you as his best friend, and I don’t think he is very far wrong.” Then she laughed and inquired whether, by any chance, I imagined that she had lost her heart to this appreciative scion of the British aristocracy. I avoided giving a direct answer. I was under no illusion upon the subject; but I had, sense enough to see that the mischief had passed beyond the range of verbal correctives. What course it behoved me to take, and what course our mother would have taken, had she been situated as I was, I could not tell, but it seemed to me best to promise that I would keep Nora’s secret and to adopt every possible precaution for pre- venting further private intercourse between her and Hurstbourne. I can’t say for certain, but I rather sus- pect that, during the ensuing ten days, they both of them found me a persistent and intolerable nuisance. They behaved very well about it. They professed, and even appeared, to be delighted with the companionship which I so ruthlessly thrust upon them; they never inquired how it was that I had such a superfluity of leisure upon my hands all of a sudden; there was not, properly speaking, the smallest flirtation between them when I joined in their games of billiards, or when—a genuine thaw having at last set in—I attended them in the hunting-field. Yet, watching them narrowly, I perceived by a thousand little signs that my fears rested upon only too solid a foundation, and that the worst that could happen had happened. The worst, I Eomichbooks (E(0)