A Struggle for a Ring — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

A MOTHER’S STRATAGEM. 109 He rose and went to the table in search of the fan. How was he to know that it had been purposely laid side by side with a superb painting, the portrait of the loveliest girl in Europe, the Lady Ethel Pierpont? He stood gazing at it like one in a dream, forgetting his errand, his mother, his wife, and everything else, in the superb beauty of that fair young face. Lady Waldrove raised her head. ‘‘What are you looking at, Vivian? What are you doing?” He went over to her couch quietly, ROlne the picture in his hand. ‘‘ Mother,” he said, in a low voice, ‘‘ whose portrait is this?” The countess looked at it with an expression of great annoyance, though her heart beat fast with delight at the success of her stratagem. ‘¢You must not touch that, Vivian; indeed you should not have looked at it.” ‘‘Who is it, mother?” he repeated. ‘¢That I would rather not tell you,” she replied. ‘‘It is no one wapn OF have ever seen; it is the portrait of a friend of mine.’ ‘© A friend of yours, and I do not know her?” he said. ‘¢Her mother is a friend of mine,” said the countess; . “it is she who sent me her daughter's portrait. I have seen her daughter several_times. You do not know them.” ‘¢That is true. If I had seen the original of that picture, mother, I should have remembered her. It is your favorite style oh beauty, too—Spanish and English mixed.” Gomicbooks a