A Struggle for a Ring — page 179: what you’re looking at

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

‘ ALMOST FORGOTTEN. 175 Seymour waited to see if Annie Boleyn would be slain, and their mistress married on the morrow; that was an- other when Elizabeth of England lay tossing on her couch trying to decide whether Essex should die or not; it was another when poor Lady Jane Grey spent her last hours in prison, wondering whether men could really put one so young and tender to death; another when Marie Antoi- nette, the Austrian, watched for the first gleam of CBF that was to be her last. This night that Alice passed was, in its way, as strange as any of them; it seemed to change her from a girl toa woman; while it lasted, her youth, her hope, the bright- ness of her life, all seemed to die. Hettie never forgot it ; she had never been so frightened before. ‘The darkness she had longed for became almost unbearable, the silence terrible, for, as the night went on, Alice talked wildly, the burning heat increased. She cried out that she must see him—he was going away for years, and she must say one word to him.. But the most terrible moment of all was when Alice, half-mad in the delirium of her fever and sorrow, thought he had returned to her—how she wept, prayed, and pleaded with him—how she prayed him fora little love—a little love—one kind word, one kiss before he went away. 7 ‘‘T hope,” thought Hettie, ‘‘that such a thing as th¥s will never happen to me; I never have cared for a man— I care still less now. . If one can make poor Alice suffer, how much suffering is inflicted by a world of men?” Then, while the unhappy young wife tossed to and fro, sometimes crimson in the delirium of fever, sometimes white and still as one who lay dead, Hettie sat by her, wondering what would happen to her—would she recover, _or would this illness deepen on her until she died? Then ~ oks.