Do I assume the EPUB was created in some word processor?
You mentioned the space in
Y E
Code:
<p class="olde">Doy¥ y e kno whot I woold lykke to do? I woold lykke to iu¥ ƒett whythe y e in a roome ƒwmwher and ¬ar in a qwiett moment of yow r tyme —</p>
The odd characters and spacing may be from the attempt at styling in the Source.
You might try running the source through a Calibre conversion, them tune that up
