A Struggle for a Ring — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

168 A STRANGE PARTING. and indifference with which he treated his young wife. As it was, he walked down the street with a half impatient smile. It was over, thank Heaven, and he had had quite enough of it. Afterall, it had been a mad freak, a foolish marriage, an absurd kind of sacrifice to an absurd idea; he was well rid of it. Something or other would most assuredly happen before he returned from Gibraltar; and even if it did not, he should be absent at least for some years, and forget it for a while. He had been lavishly generous to them; and, after all, it-had been a fortunate day for poor Alice Derwent. He did not think of her as he passed along the sun- lighted streets; he had forgotten her long before he reached the railway station ; and when, in the after days, he thought of her, it was with the feeling of one who had done his duty in the most noble manner possible. ‘“It seems a strange kind of marriage, does this,” said Mrs. Derwent, as the door closed. ‘‘I should not have liked a husband who would have left me forso long.” ‘‘TIt has been a good thing for us, Fanny,” said the dancing-master, slowly; ‘‘we need not find fault with it. I cannot think what would have become of this great, awkward Frank here but for this money.” igs quickly resented this insult to his manhood, declaring that he was no more awkward than any one else. John Derwent looked at him slowly, with an amusing glance. | ‘*You will never dance properly, Frank, if you live for- ever,” he said, and he could imagine no greater reproach than that. _‘*T am sure,” chimed in poor Mrs. Derwent, ‘‘ that the way of love and marriage seems to me a very hard one. comicbooks.: