A Struggle for a Ring — page 247: what you’re looking at

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

A WIFE DECORATING A RIVAL. 243 no very pleased expression on the beautiful, tragic face of Lord Carsdale’s young wife. She went to her room; how different it all was from what it ought to be. She vas his wife. His coming home mattered more to her than to any one else. She was his wife—all flowers, all jewels, all else that could beautify ought to have. been hers; every one should have been waiting on her—helping her; instead of that no one even remembered her existence; the lowliest servant in the house had apparently more claim on him than she. Time had been when she had pictured to her- self how she would dress to receive him—how she would look as beautiful as possible so as to win a look of admi- ration from him. Now, she did not dare to unpack the boxes where her pretty dresses lay. She took down the well-worn gray silk with the silver fringe ; there was no one to care whether she looked nice or not—no one to place a flower in her hair or a jewel on her neck—no one to notice whether she looked ill or well. All those thoughts crowded on her mind as she stood looking at the gray silk. Then she fell on her knees, and wept the most bitter tears that any woman's eyes could shed. | | | ‘‘Ts there any one in the whole wide world so lonely?” she sobbed—‘‘so lonely, so unloved? And my husband is coming home to-day! They will dress the beautiful woman who I fear may be my rival; they will put crimson roses in her golden hair and jewels on her white neck; while I, who would die for him, shall look so plain and insignificant! Why should it be? He is my own, although I dare not say so—dare not even utter his name.” Perhaps it was some terrible sense of the sorrows to come that made her tremble as she knelt there—the first thrill of that strange tragedy which was to form her life, — ‘comicboo e(@) Se