A Struggle for a Ring — page 248: what you’re looking at

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

244 A WIFE DECORATING A RIVAL. Then she had to rise and dress. What matter whether she felt inclined or not, it must be done. She must dress, and go to Lady Ethel. | She looked almost repiningly in the mirror; the pale, grand, passionate beauty of her face was lost on her; she compared it with the brilliant loveliness of Lady Ethel, and shrank at the contrast. ‘*What will she louk like,” thought the girl, ‘‘ when her head is crowned with crimson flowers? Love itself sits in her eyes; one smile from her lips has power to make even marble warm; while Iam pale, thin, worn with sleepless nights and anxious days.” If she had but known it, there was no more comparison between the patrician loveliness of Lady Ethel’s ‘face and the grand, tragic beauty of her own than there is be- tween a poppy and a rose. She put on the gray silk, all unconscious that the lines of her most perfect figure were curves that would have enchanted:a sculptor; quite igno- rant that she had the loveliest neck and shoulders ever seen. She brushed out the long, shining waves of hair— hair that had such a dash of sunlight in it; that had none of the weak characteristics of fair hair, but was supple and brilliant, and beautiful, with a luxuriant beauty that could not be hidden. There was no ornament for it, no roses to crown it, no jewels to gleam in its depths, but it was a crown itself such as few women wear. Tall, graceful, with her grand, passionate, beautiful face, and tender, love-lit eyes, she never even imagined how striking a figure she was. She went to Lady Ethel’s room, and found-the young heiress there in the midst of the most artistic surroundings—crimson roses, and droop- ing green ferns, emeralds, and diamonds, fans, made of the rarest plumes—every possible luxury and elegance that Gomichbooks c 3 (E(@) m