A Struggle for a Ring — page 196: what you’re looking at

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

192 MADAME ROUBART’S ADVICE. On this bright May morning she stood in the pretty room allotted to her, and no fairer picture could have been found in all this gay city of London. She had grown taller; her figure was beautifully developed ; it was full of grace, and symmetry, and harmony, well-rounded, with lovely curves and lines; her fair hair had grown darker in hue—it was glossy and silken, and was wound in rich coils round a noble head; her throat was white asa lily, grace- ful and firm; she had arms that would have made a sculptor dream, and shoulders that were perfect. She was ‘simply but elegantly dressed, the dark silk relieved by delicate white lace; but it was her face that riveted atten- tion ; any stranger, seeing it for the first time, stood won- dering what was in it. | The unfinished ‘‘sketchy” beauty of the girl had given place to the marvelous loveliness of the woman; the regu- lar features were fully developed, the sweet, sad lips, with their hidden dimples, had a new charm, there were new depths in the beautiful, sad eyes; but it was not so much the loveliness of the face that attracted one as the story told there—the repressed passion, the intensity of love, the tragedy. It was essentially a tragic face; looking at it, you felt sure that, no matter who the girl was, or what she ~ was, there was no common destiny in store for her, no common love, no common sorrow; a beautiful tragic face —the lustrous, liquid eyes, full of untold poetry, sadness, and love; the sweet lips, most beautiful and most sad when she smiled. How could she go through life like other people—she who lived in cloudland, she whose thoughts were always with the husband who had married her with less con- sideration than he would have given to the choosing of a hunter or a hound—how could she take life quietly and Le 4 comicbooks ‘ >. y * - — pO mat 7 : =< Pa ‘ : =e Gy - a . ‘ # i a * * I 5 ™~ a a