A Struggle for a Ring — page 318: what you’re looking at

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

314 DRESSING A RIVAL. There is something very pleasant in being loved, even though we do not love in return. Lady Waldrove sent for him as soon as he re-entered the house. “Come and amuse us, Vivian,” she said. ‘‘ Your father and all the gentlemen have gone to the élection dinner— we are quite alone, and I am quite afraid that we are rather tired of each other—come and amuse us.” He took his usual seat by his mother’s side. Floss was almost delirious with joy, Castor and Pollux were most demonstrative in their welcome; Lady Gertrude had pleas- ‘ant smiles and pleasant words for him; Lady Ethel, in her evening. dress of amber and white, looked bewitchingly beautiful; he could not have been more cordially wel- comed. He told them the incidents of the day, whom he had seen at Ashdale Park; then, suddenly, he seemed to lose himself, and he heard his mother’s voice, saying : ‘How distrav you are, Vivian. Do you not hear Lady Ethel speaking to you?) What are you thinking of?” What, indeed! He was startled to find that just then his thoughts had strayed back to that evening’s interview— . that he was once more out in the starlight, under the shade of the elm trees—a beautiful, pale, passionate face looking into his, a sweet voice pleading to him for a little love, a little kindness! He was positively surprised to find that he had forgotten everything around him, thinking only of his wife. He was startled and surprised. That same evening, as fortune would have it, Ailie, after she entered the house, went to the library in search of a book, and there what should she find but the story of *«Patient Griselda,” surely one of the most beautiful poems in our annals—Patient Griselda, who bore every kind of indigaity, yet never complained—who thought the world ‘comicbooks