A Struggle for a Ring — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

104 SISTER AND WIFE CONTRASTED. level of the woman he marries. I have the greatest con- tempt for anything of the kind.” ‘‘Heaven help me, then!” thought Lord Carsdale. ‘* What would he say if he knew my story?” Lady Waldrove thought the duke the most sensible man she had ever met. In her clear, high-bred voice, she said : ‘7 quite agree in your ideas; I think nothing so dread- ful as.a mesalliance of that kind.” «Such a marriage strikes a blow at the very foundation of society,” said the duke. ‘‘Too much cannot be said against it. Society would be utterly ruined if the different classes composing it were so mixed by marriage.” While Lord Carsdale, listening in silence, thought how more than fortunate it was that this stately circle of noble relations and frends knew nothing of his little escapade. ‘‘And yet,” he said to himself, ‘‘I am sure there was higher chivalry, higher honor, more royal generosity in marrying that girl than in leaving her to be turned adrift on the werld. No one would have believed her innocent. I have been honorable after my own fashion,” he said; ‘“‘they can please themselves; I have done what I thought right; they will do the same, I suppose.” But it made him thoughtful, more thoughtful than he had ever been in his life before. For the first time he noticed how rigid the laws of caste were—how proud and reserved his own people were, after all. Easy, free, and kind with their equals, gracious and generous to their dependents, cold, proud, and reserved to their inferiors, © . As he had journeyed home, after that rash, hasty mar- riage of his, he had thought many things. One was that he.would boldly declare and avow what he had done; after = ™~ ; + ~ comicbooks