His Grace — page 212: what you’re looking at

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

206 HIS GRACE. angry face of Lady Deverell; but neither of the ladies saw me: otherwise I am sure that the elder would not have said, in a loud, clear voice: “Tt is nonsense to pretend that you have not deceived me, Leila, because you now admit having met him. If you had told me before you started that you were going out on purpose to meet him, you might claim to have behaved honestly.” “Only then you wouldn’t have let me go,” Miss St. George observed. “Most certainly I should not. Good gracious, Leila, can’t you understand that you are making yourself per- fectly ridiculous, besides endangering your chance of marrying really well? I can assure you that you will never marry the Duke of Hurstbourne, because I shall take measures to prevent that, if you drive me to employ them; but my firm belief is that he won’t propose to you. Are you so blind as not to see that he has lost his heart to poor little Nora Martyn? I don’t say that he will make a duchess of her—that would be too absurd ; although the poor child may be silly enough to fancy that he will.” I confess that I should have been in honor bound to sneeze before that, if I could have managed it; but it takes a few moments to get up a thoroughly natural and effective sneeze. Under cover of the tremendous hullabaloo which I presently succeeded in raising Nora made good her escape, while I stepped smilingly forth from my ambush to face the disconcerted ladies. They must have felt disconcerted, and one of them looked so; the other, I am forced by the veracity incumbent upon a conscientious historian to admit, did not. Miss St. George had one of her usual vague nods at my ser- GEomichboo cS (E(@)