A Struggle for a Ring — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

146 LOVE AND REGRET. increased pain to Lord Carsdale. They were back again now on the lawn, and Lady Ethel saw there was no further cause for fear; others were there under the star-light, some standing round the fountains, others sitting where the lime blossoms fell in the bright summer weather. She stopped when she saw that. ‘«There are others as imprudent as ourselves, ’ And Lord Carsdale added : ‘‘Without the same excuse.” She turned to him quite impatiently. ‘‘What excuse do you mean? What excuse had we?” He was humble as a child to her. ‘‘We wanted to say farewell, and they have no such word to say.” The next moment she had taken her little white hand from his arm, and had entered the house, leaving him alone. ‘‘] am always offending her,” he thought. ‘‘Now what have I done?” He could not understand it, because he always remem- bered what his mother had said—that her beauty was not for him ; and of all things, the last that he imagined was that this proud patrician was in love with him. He fol- lowed her into the bail-room; he saw her resplendént in her. loveliness, her graceful figure draped in whitesilk and costly lace, diamonds gleaming in her dark hair and on her white breast ; he watched the play of those lovely features, the light in her dark eyes, and he went mad with ‘love and regret, Then he spoke to her, and she affected not to hear or understand him; she declined to dance with him. ‘Then she dropped a beautiful spray of steph- onatis, and he picked it up; he took it to her, ‘This has fallen from your bouquet, Lady Ethel,” be ’ she said. cComicbooks (E(o)