A Struggle for a Ring — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

THE MEETING. 157 have gone after Lady Ethel, and he would not have left her until she promised to be his wife. What happiness! He dare not think of it. How proud he should have been to have shown such a wife to the world—to have taken her to his proud mother, and have- said, ‘‘See what a wife I have won !|—a daughter after your own heart!” How glad his father would have been! He lifted up a stone and flung it into the depths of the sea. ‘‘What nonsense!” he said. ‘‘ Why should I waste my time in dreaming? I might as well try to find that stone again as try to see any chance, any hope of escape from what I have done. I have riveted my own fetters, and if they are heavy, I have no one to blame but myself.” He went back to Roseneath, and the first intelligence which greeted him was that marching orders had arrived ; he had but ten days more in England, and then he was to go with his regiment to Gibraltar. gy | ‘Vou will stay with us to the last, Vivian?” said the countess, who loved her son. ‘‘I shall not like losing you—you will remain with us?” And then it occurred to him that, before going to Gib- raltar, he must return to Rudeswell and make some arrangement with his wife. CHAPTER XXII. THE MEETING. Alice had grown tired of longing; she had waited, watched, hoped, and prayed; then a sudden sense of despair came over her, Of. what use was it all? He had (E(0) mm (C JOO Ss (E(0)