A Struggle for a Ring — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

36 DECIDING HER FATE. ‘with a fainting heart. They had spent one whole hour before the doctor’s closed-up house. ‘¢Vour answer, Alice?” he whispered. What could she answer? She gave one despairing thought all round her life, as it were, and she saw no hope. After being absent for a day and a night, without permission, she knew that the doctor would never permit her to cross his sacred threshold again. She knew that her parents would be annoyed with her for losing the doctor's _ favor—they had hoped such great things from it that they would never speak to her again; there was no help for it, no other way out of the difficulty. Nothing else to be done but to obey his wish. She looked up to the pale, golden stars, a hasty, passionate glance, as though praying from the high Heaven help to think clearly. If in that one moment she could have seen clearly all that she had to suffer, beautiful Alice Derwent would have laid her head on the ground and prayed God in his mercy to let her die. But she was young and hopeful; it seemed to her that a great hero wooed her. She looked up at him wistfully with faith and love. ‘« My answer is ‘yes,’ Lord Carsdale,” she said, solemnly. He looked pleased. “‘] am glad you have trusted me, Alice,” he said. “T - _ had begun to imagine that you did not.” ‘“‘T trust you, all in all,” she answered. Then Lord Carsdale said: ‘‘We have no time to lose, Alice. You must follow my directions implicitly. While you have been deciding your fate I have been thinking it all over.” Eomicboo CS (eve)