I Forbid the Banns! — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

ON A REVELATION. 83 a most remarkable thing that she was not made the object of the adoration of the women. For the first few days that she had been aboard the Car- narvon Castle some of the ladies, headed by Mrs. Howard, had shown a disposition to discharge toward her that agree- able duty known as *‘ taking her up.” She was so young, they said. And inclined to be good looking. And her aunt was so greatly given to slumber in the day- time. The first step in taking up any girl is to get her to confide in you. The second is to tell her her most conspicuous faults. Then she is taken up. But Bertha Lancaster was not without experience of this social rapture ; and she declined to be taken up even by Mrs. Howard, giving that lady to understand so much with- out amoment’s delay, lest there might be any mistake. The method which she adopted, with great success, was a simple one. When Mrs. Howard, with two other ladies, endeavored to get this young Australian girl to confide in them regarding her past life and its mysteries, she had informed them with artless simplicity that her father had been a convict. The revelation produced a profound impression upon the ladies to whom it was made. They took her hand and said they sympathized deeply with her, and then they found that they had some very important duties to discharge in other parts of the ship. Mrs. Howard believed that she saw Marian Travers beck- oning to her; Mrs. Glossop wondered how she had been so stupid as to forget her embroidery in the saloon ; and Mrs. Barnes, who was deficient in imagination, said she had a headache. So Bertha was not taken up. Gomichbookssco