I Forbid the Banns! — page 233: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXXIII. ON THE STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY. ULIAN CHARLTON had been very well acquainted ] with the Rushtons of Queen’s Elms previous to his setting out on his travels. Sir Edwin Rushton was the fourth baronet. ‘The first had been of great service to the government of Mr. Fox, and had received his baronetcy as a reward. He had been moderately wealthy; but cards, horses, and plain daughters had been so fatal to the pros- perity of the family that the fourth baronet, who had four daughters exceeding in plainness even the most character- istically plain of their grand-aunts unto the third genera- tion back, was known to be yearly in search of a person willing to lend money upon the security of unlet farms. As he had not discovered this philanthropist, his circum- stances were, as a rule, straitened. Julian recollected how each of the four plain daughters of the house of Rushton had shown herself sympathetic with his own aspirations. He had been a scientific explorer in those days, and in order to show her sympathy, the eldest had openly scoffed at the book of Genesis—thereby ruining her prospects with the young rector who had just been pre- sented with the living of Brackenhurst. When his artistic fit came upon him, a year later, the second bought ten yards of old gold muslin at Mr. Liberty’s, a pink paper shade for the lamp, and a screen with a stork on it. She had tied the muslin in scarf lengths round the flower pots, she had made reading impossible with her lamp shade, and she had provoked ‘a critical comparison 223 (CONNIE IOOKS