A Struggle for a Ring — page 194: what you’re looking at

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

190 MADAME ROUBART’S ADVICE. CHAPTER XXVII. MADAME ROUBART’S ADVICE. Four years had passed since Vivian, Lord Carsdale, went away, leaving his young wife, and four years had brought changes. The merry month of May had just begun to smile over the land, the fire of the laburnums gleamed golden from the green masses of foliage, the birds were singing in their leafy bowers, the air was sweet with the odor of violet and mignonette, the trees thrilled again with the sweetness of new life. One bright morning in this bright month, Alice stood ‘in her room alone; she had been out with Madame Rou- bart, and some little incident that occurred on the way had sent her thoughts to the husband who had almost ceased to remember her existence. For the last two years he had not written one line to her; she had received her income, simply because it was a matter quite ‘in the lawyers hands—Lord Carsdale had nothing to do with it. This bright May morning, thinking of him and of how strangely her life was passing, had saddened her. Four “years married, and during that time her husband had ‘neither wditten nor spoken one word of love to her—he had never kissed her, never held her hand in his own, never shown the least interest in her since the day he had married ‘her; while she had grown to love him with an idolatrous love. All the poems, the novels she had read, the love stories written in burning words, the tragedies, the reading of which had mocked her life—all these had gone to feed the wild worship she had for him. cComicbooks co