A Struggle for a Ring — page 213: what you’re looking at

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

A SURPRISE. 209 CHAPTER XXX, A SURPRISE, Ailie owned to herself afterward, when she became more accustomed to everything, that she had gone through emotion enough to have almost killed an ordinary woman. With that intense, passionate love breathing in her heart, surging in her brain, thrilling every nerve, every pulse, it had been no light thing for her to see for the first time her husband’s home and his friends. When she first saw Roseneath her courage failed her; it seemed to her almost impossible that. she should have married the lord of such a princely home. Neither in her travels or in her dreams had she ever imagined a place so stately or so fair; and she—well, if right meant right, she~who entered those grand, historic walls as the humble companion of their proud mistress would be one day mistress there herself— must, if all be true, be one day Countess Waldrove of Roseneath, — . | She could not realize it; the bare idea made her heart beat with slow, burning pain—made her face blanch and her lips quiver ; she could not realize it. She said to her- self often and often. that she must be mad, that she must have dreamed of this marriage, that it could not really have taken place—there was something almost incongru- ous in the idea. She, Ailie Derwent, the dancing-mas- ter’s daughter, could not actually be Lady Carsdale, wife of the heir of Roseneath, She looked at times-half in. | wonder, half in awe, around her. All the gorgeous plate, — the superb pictures, the statues, the magnificent orna- Act n 4 . my a =) (elo) mm Y j Gcomicboo ~