A Struggle for a Ring — page 241: what you’re looking at

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

“HE IS MY HUSBAND.” 237 then, when he came home, it would not be difficult to declare his marriage. He would only have to say: ‘‘ Mother, this girl whom you love is my wife.” Where was that dream now? She laughed aloud in the bitterness of her heart as she asked herself the question. She had learned her lesson by that time—she had found out that beauty, virtue, intellect, genius, and every other _ gift that could be given by Heaven, was quite useless un- less there were high birth and money. She knew now that she had no more chance of winning the affection of these people than she had of winning the crown of Eng- land. They might love Lady Ethel, who was a patrician like themselves, and who had money; but love her—never; and she knew it. That had been her dream; it was under the influence of this hope that she had come to Roseneath—indeed, that hope, that aim, were the only things that excused her presence there. Unsupported by them, it was a freedom, a liberty that she felt it would have been better not to have taken, , What would he say when he found her there? That question began to assume a terrible form to her, although it had seemed so easy of explanation when she came—she had pictured herself saying to him that she was there to win his mother’s love; now those same words had an absurd sound. She had pictured herself telling him how she had gone there to smooth away all his difficulties, to make it easier for him to declare his marriage, to pave the way, as it were; and in all these things she had most signally failed. Indeed, as she sat there, fighting with the terrible doubts and fears that overshadowed her, she owned to herself that she had made a most terrible, a most fatal mistake. She had done wrong in going there; in all (E(0) mm (C JOO (Ee)