A Struggle for a Ring — page 326: what you’re looking at

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

322 A WIFE'S STRANGE POSITION. The long spray of roses had become quite unfastened, and, to make it secure, Ailie had to begin at the bottom of the dress. To do that she had to kneel down, and it was then that Lord Carsdale looked:so strangely at her. The sight touched him more than he had ever been touched in his life before—her gentle, graeeful humility, her kindly good-nature, her wonderful self-control; and, after all, she was his lawful wife, and she knewit. It was Lady Carsdale kneeling there with the humility of a child, helping her rival, the woman whom she half feared, half dreaded that her husband loved. How proudly and scorn- fully some girls would have refused to render that kindly ofiice—how haughtily they would have said it was the work of a lady's maid; but she had not hesitated one moment. He looked at the beautiful, pure face, so intent and earnest ; he looked at the golden head bent in such sweet humility; he looked at the graceful figure, the white hands. Ailie had never been so near her husband’s heart as she was at that moment. It struck him with a sudden keen sense of shame that his wife should be kneeling there in gentle attendance upon her rival. His face flushed hotly. He went to the other end of the room; then he returned. He could not endureit. After all she was his wife, Lady Carsdale, although the world did not know it. He stopped quite abruptly before her, and he spoke so abruptly that both ladies looked quickly at him. “You will tire yourself, Miss Derwent,” he said, ‘‘kneeling there. Let me give you a chair.” Lady Ethel detected the strange tone in his voice; Ailie thought only of the kindness which prompted the words, and the face that she raised to his was beautiful in its pas- sionate love, ‘‘T could not fasten these flowers if I were sitting, Lord (eo) m