A Struggle for a Ring — page 367: what you’re looking at

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

“THAT SEALS MY FATE!” 363 was so hopelessly enslaved with Lady Ethel, that he would have no thought for any one else. ‘«She seems to be such a good girl, too—so modest, so retiring and gentle. I cannot think that she would allow any love-making nonsense; still, she had a guilty face.” It was significant of the pride of the family that her brother, Lord Carsdale, never once occurred to her. mind. She would just as soon have suspected him of forgery as of a flirtation with her mother’s companion. So that Lady Gertrude passed on, anxious and disturbed, while Ailie went to her room, and, to her wonder, found the door open again! ‘This time she remembered to have closed it, so that some one must have turned the handle and have entered ; but there was nothing disturbed—there was no sound, no sign of any one having been there. ‘‘Tt was a servant, perhaps,” she said to herself, ‘‘ with a message from the countess. If anything is said about it, I can easily account for having been away from my room ;” and, in the pressure of other thoughts, she for- got that. Now she put out the lamp. She made no pretense of going to sleep; she could not rest with that beating heart and throbbing pulse. Her face burned like fire where he had kissed her, and her hands were cold as the white hands of the dead. She sat by the window, watching the darkness, the soft, gray shadows that began to come with the morning, the soft, sweet mists, that seemed to cling lovingly to flower and tree; to watch the gray, noiseless shadows of the night, as one by one they disappeared and gave place to the lovely, laughing light of morning. Her life was in her hands, and not hers alone, but the life of two others; the two paths were clear enough before her. She did not doubt for one moment the possibility of Eomicboo (EO)