A Struggle for a Ring — page 249: what you’re looking at

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

A WIFE DECORATING A RIVAL. 245. art or imagination could devise. Lady Ethel looked up when Alice entered the room. ‘‘T am so glad you have come, Miss Derwent,”’ she said. ‘‘How kind it is of you. See what a quantity of beauti- ful roses the gardener has sent me. Ah, they may well call this place Roseneath.” Then Alice sat down in the midst of the splendor; she tried to forget who was being dressed, and why—she tried to interest herself solely in the artistic delight of arranging the flowers. Then a new, strange pain seemed to smite her; she saw something in Lady Ethel she had never seen before—a brightness, a lightness of heart—the light that never yet shone on land or sea, shone on her face now—why was it? Could it be because ‘‘ he” vas coming home? She longed to look up from her flowers and say: ‘‘ Do not dress to cap- tivate Lord Carsdale, Lady Ethel; he is my husband.” What consternation such an announcement would make? But that, of course, she could not do. So, while the maid brushed out the fine, golden hair, and prepared the beau- tiful white lace, Alice, with white, slender fingers, wove the bright flowers and green ferns together. Never had Lady Ethel been so bright. Alice wondered at her. An artist might have studied the picture; the queenly heiress, with her magnificent surroundings, the lace that cost a king’s ransom, the flowers and jewels, standing erect in her sweep- ing white dress, while deft fingers arranged the flushed flow- ers and drooping leaves. Superbly beautiful, but losing when compared with the pale, tragical face of the girl whose soft gray dress had no ornaments, but whose face might have looked down from the walls of Troy on the beleagured hosts. Just such limitless woe must have looked from tne eyes of Juliet. Just such dawning tragedy must have KS GO Eomicboo