A Struggle for a Ring — page 133: what you’re looking at

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

THE SPELL WORKS. 129 ‘‘Your fancy, mother.” And then they crossed the room together, the mother leading the son to his fate. CHAPTER XVIII. THE SPELL WORKS. In one moment a star has fallen from heaven; in one moment a nation has been almost destroyed by earth- quake; in one moment burning floods of lava have buried a beautiful city; in one moment a great tidal wave has swept over the land, leaving it desolate; in one moment Lord Carsdale fell from the heights of indif- ference, where he had lived so long, into the depths of love, where life was a torment. He looked up into her face when the countess introduced him, and that one look was fatal; he loved her in that one instant with a love that was his doom. He did not know it; he would never have owned to it; he would have been the first to deny it most bitterly, and he would have believed in his own denial; but aJl the same, it was most perfectly true that one glance had undone him; and indeed few men looked into that brilliant, laughing face with impunity» It was simply peerlessly perfect. Perfect beauty is often cold and with- out expression; Lady Ethel’s was not. Who shall paint her or tell what she looked like, as she raised her dark eyes with a smile and glanced with fearless pride at the young lord? He wondered afterward that he had not knelt at her feet, and cried out to her that her beauty had conquered him. He loved her; he won- dered how he had refrained from some expression of that (E(0) mm (C JOO <S (€ Q) =