A Struggle for a Ring — page 180: what you’re looking at

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

176 ALMOST FORGOTTEN. Hettie wondered over many things. Fora love match, it was most certainly a strange one; yet, if he had not loved her—this rich stranger—why need he have married her? He must have loved her very much indeed to have married her. What had become of the love since, for certainly, so far as she could see, none of it remained? He was most completely indifferent to her. ‘‘T suppose,” thought Hettie, ‘‘that a man’s love does not last very long-—a few weeks, or, at the most, a few months, and all is over; the light dies, the glamour fades. Thank Heaven! no man will ever either make me mis- erable or make me love him.” She was very stanch and true to her unhappy sister; she spent the long hours of the night watching by her side ; she never left her. No one could have believed that that gentle girl, whose fingers touched the hot head so gently, whose voice murmured such sweet words, was Hettie, the romp, the untidy girl, the loud-voiced—in fact, as Mrs. Derwent languidly called her, the vulgarian of the family. When morning had broken, fresh and gray, Alice fell into a deep slumber, fevered and restless at first, but deeper and more tranquil after a time. That slumber, in all probability, saved her from a severe illness. ‘‘Ts it morning?” she said, when she opened her eyes— ‘‘morning, Hetiie, and you have been with me all night. -I have lived through that now, I shall not die. It seems to me, Hettie, long weeks since I came here to sleep my pain away. You have been very good to me, my little sister. ” She tried to rise, but the trembling limbs, the white face, so full of haggard pain, frightened Hettie, who per- suaded her to lie still. comicboo (Eo) CS