A Struggle for a Ring — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

122 “GIVE ME LOVE, OR HATE.” ‘¢Well, I will do better. When is Mr. Nelson coming back ?” ‘‘T do not know, Hettie—he does not say; he has some business on hand, and will come when it is over.” What would Alice have thought if she could have known that at that very moment her husband was plan- ning to leave England without returning to Rudeswell? He did not care to go through the ceremony of bidding his young wife farewell. CHAPTER XVIL. ‘‘GIVE ME LOVE, OR HATE.” Time had seemed very long to Alice. She had been educated so far above her station that home, although she loved it very dearly, was almost unendurable to her; her father’s brusqueness and irritability, her mother’s gentle, constant complaint, were easier to bear than Hettie’s loud- ness and vulgarity. Rose was seldom at home; she was teaching in a family, who liked her so well that she received constant invitations from their house, so that, to all intents and purposes, she was alone. The loneliness would not have been so bad to bear but that she had . yielded her whole heart and soul to the passionate love that filled it. If she had not worshiped her husband so entirely, she might have been a very happy girl; she had money to do what she would with—no one questioned her as to her outlay, no one interfered with her; she could pursue her favorite studies, she could practice her favorite (e(@) comic ,00KS