A Struggle for a Ring — page 215: what you’re looking at

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

A SURPRISE. ae intensity ; only a noble woman could be capable of such .alove. The fire of passion does not touch ignoble souls; they are incapable of it. If he had said to her, ‘‘Ailie, give me your life,” she would have given it to him. She had made him her king and her master, lord of all the wide earth, lo.d of her own soul. . She lived in the thought of him, in the memory of those few weeks they had spent together when they had been good friends, nothing more. It was the love that makes tragedies, that saves souls—the grandest passion that is given to man. ‘But—and the punishment comes swiftly after the sin—she made him her idol. She gave to him the love that a ‘‘Divine law” says shall be given to God alone. She made him her ido]. What wonder if she found the feet of clay—if the swift, unerring punishment of idolatry fell upon her. As the summer days, all. beautiful with roses and dew, passed on, she became more accustomed to her surround- | ings, more habituated to the thought that she was in the _ heart of her husband’s home. One day a hard trial came to her; she heard the earl and countess talking about a picture that was expected home—some injury or other that had been done to the frame, and it had been sent to Lon- don. ‘The earl wished to have it in the dining-room, the » countess said no; it must be placed in her own room, where she could look at it as long as she liked, and when she liked. The earl, in his good-natured fashion, gave way. Ailie did not pay much attenion, but she noticed the arrival of the large packing-case; she heard the confusion of the careful unpacking, and then, engrossed in some little duties for the countess, she thought no more of it, until she went, us usual, to Lady Waldrove’s room, her comicbooks.com