A Struggle for a Ring — page 214: what you’re looking at

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

“aes A SURPRISE. ments, the bric-a-brac, the Wedgewood, the old china, the rare books—was it, could it be possible that all this should fall to her—that she, reared in poverty, used to the plainest of living, the plainest of dress—was it possible that one day she should be mistress of all this wealth? She never even tried to picture herself as mistress of Rose- neath; her imagination could not go so far. She would look sometimes at the servants when they seemed slow to do her bidding, and wonder what would they say or think if they knew who she really was. | _ But among all her dreams and visions she never saw the _future-—she never imagined her husband returning, taking her by the hand and introducing her to his friends; the future to her was always blurred, indistinct. She had always a faint foreboding that something would happen—a vague idea that in some strange way this marriage of hers would turn out to be a mistake—that it would dis- solve into thin air. Yet there was the wedding-ring fas- tened round her neck by a slender gold chain—nothing could do away with that. She loved him so entirely that each moment of her life seemed, as it were, to hold it all. She neither looked to the past or the future. She lived in the grand love of the present. It was a grand, noble passion, this love of hers, such as has been sung in old Grecian legends, and in Roman tragedies; a love that absorbed her heart and soul. He was the world to her; great events passed, far and near; she thought nothing of them. The world for her meant Vivian Carsdale; outside him all was blank, unmeaning space. She met many people, but she never even seemed to see them; that one face, the dark-haired, dark-eyed lover, filled the universe for her. She loved him witha wonderful love; there was something half divine in its comicbooks com to