A Struggle for a Ring — page 281: what you’re looking at

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

AILIE’S PROMISE. : 277 She bowed her fair face over the strong hand held out to her. ‘*T have nothing to forgive,’ she replied. ‘* You have- been very kind to me. Good-by.” The next moment she had passed from his sight, and the moonbeams fell on the grass where she had stood. He did not move; long ago he had forgotten all about his cigar and why he was there; he could not at first recover from the shock. What he said seemed cruel, but it was perfectly true—he h d almost forgotten her. The fact of his marriage he had not, and never could, forget; but he had almost forgotten her—her features, her voice. If he had met her suddenly, he would not have recognized her. He felt very sad and very much surprised. That she should have grown into such a passionate, loving, earnest woman, astonished him as much as her beautiful face had done; and she loved him so completely, so entirely. ‘‘Tt was ten thousand pities!” he said to himself. ‘¢ Here, for one act of boyish folly, three people are made miserable for life—Lady Ethel, my golden-haired love, whose life is made miserable because of her love; Ailie, who will never be happy; last of all, I, myself, who love a woman I can never marry,’and am married to a woman I can never love,” What a wreck of love, of life, of happiness it all seemed —three lives all spoiled; for he said to himself that, though she was beautiful exceedingly, he should never love her. Only one woman had power to touch his heart, and that woman was never to be his. He could never recover from the shock. It seemed . almost terrible to him that this girl, through whom his life had been marred, should have been living in this: house—the house that was one day to be his, It had been comicbooks